


Drunken Whaler

by Alisette



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Obligatory Mermaid AU, Whaler!Corvo, because apparently nobody has thought to do that yet, canon appropriate sadness, like on a whaling trawler, no not like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:42:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alisette/pseuds/Alisette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They call him the Leviathan but somehow nobody ever stopped to consider why that was. In retrospect, thinking about that before going out to hunt whales may have been a good idea. It's an oversight that Corvo survives just barely and one that will prove to have irrevocable consequences on his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He’d been woken by whale song early this morning. It was a good sign, of course, they’d been searching for them for nearly a month already, and returning to harbor without one would mean no pay. So when the first notes of the song vibrated through the belly of the ship the men had all but jumped out of their cots and rushed to deck to look for the tell-tale signs against the waves. 

Even above the waterline, the sound was audible, or maybe it was more of a feeling, coming up from the very metal under their feet; it had to be close to be this loud, or a whale of truly horrifying size. With some worry Corvo leaned over the rail to look down into the sea. The water was almost black and impossible to see through and he couldn’t help but imagine the giant head of a whale rushing them from the deeps, ready to hit their keel like a hammer, tear through the metal of the hull as if it was nothing but a child’s toy and sinking them under the waves without the slightest of efforts. 

His horror fantasy had nearly distracted him from the flit of a fin under the waves, just a short moment where light broke on the back of a whale as it cut through the waves. Not a big one, not by a far shot, but even a small whale was better than no whale at all. Void take it, if they got lucky and managed to catch a calf they might not even need a big one. Sure there wasn’t much oil to be had from them, but the skins and meat was some sort of trend and you could very nearly get a calves' weight in coin. 

Corvo whistled sharply and waved two fellow whalers over to ready the harpoon before their prey could dive away again. Loading the harpoon took so long that he was afraid they’d lost it again when he saw the fluke break the surface again just a little ahead of the ship. He took aim and shot, and for a moment he feared that it had gone far. Only for a split second, then the whale song around them shifted in pitch, going high and piercing. The whale thrashed, the water it splashed up almost black from the blood in it and then the line went taunt and it dove down. He took a step back and that was a mistake. Someone had done an Outsider-kissed job of rolling up the harpoon line and Corvo had a single moment of horrified surprise as a circle of the line tightened around his ankle and then it had already pulled him over board. 

The water may as well have been a wall, hard and for a moment the dark water was replaced with white stars exploding in his skull, before the cold slashed through the pain. He almost wished it hadn’t. The whale was still pulling him deeper into the water, a faint flicker of white fluke at the end of the line, clouded by blood. It dove deeper, pulling him along and within moment his ears were aching from the pressure. His fingers were already nearly numb from the cold as Corvo tried to pull his leg from free the line, but it was still taut, and if it hadn’t been so cold it would probably have been painful. Not that he’d have to worry about pain much longer, anyways. His lungs were burning and his limbs were cold and heavy, his soaked clothes only pulled him down faster, and he couldn’t see a single thing in the twilight of the water. Something almost like laughter spilled from his throat, silent bubbles rising to the surface but what did it matter? What was two seconds or twenty more of being pulled into the deep by some whale? Why fight it? 

The line around his leg slackened and slipped, but he could barely move already, and even if he’d been able to he didn’t even know where ‘up’ was anymore. There was only the freezing pressure of the water and the odd grey twilight where the light may have come from everywhere or nowhere at all. Corvo exhaled another burst of bubbles, deliberately this time. No sense prolonging it, was there? But inhaling was harder. Even with his chest burning with the need to breathe his body wasn’t quite so ready to die and his mouth wouldn’t open to let him drown quickly. Even as his vision first tunneled down to a single bright point that seemed to be coming closer but couldn’t be the surface because it stayed so solid when everything else, even his hands floating in front of his face, went hazy from the lack of air. The light vanished completely and in the dark it felt like hands pressing against his chest, over his heart and for a moment he couldn’t help but think of Jessamine. He didn’t care about the Void or the Outsider or anything at all if dying now meant seeing her again, her and Emily. 

The darkness receded with a painful stab, giving way to the same overcast skies he was so familiar to. If this was the Void, it wasn’t what the Abbey made it out to be. 

“He’s awake!” 

And that voice sounded very familiar, too. Corvo turned his head and spotted one of his fellow whalers and what looked for all in the world like the deck of the Hagfish. Not dead, then, unless the rest of the ship had somehow been killed by a whale calf as well. 

People came rushing over at once, surrounding him and pulling him to his feet, fast enough that for a moment his vision faded to black again and he doubled over again, throwing up enough seawater that he wondered if there was space for anything else inside him still. His nausea brought on more yelling from his shipmates, and a much gentler second attempt to get him upright and then wrapped in a blanket and herded under deck. 

The _Hagfish_ didn’t exactly have a sickbay or a doctor, but they had a former military medic and cot set aside and now Corvo found himself pushed into it. Gently enough, yes, but it was still somewhat undignified to be pushed around like that as a grown man. He didn’t complain, but as soon as they had him prone on the cot again, he lost all drive to complain anyhow. The bed was much softer than the deck above, and once lying down the various hurts of his body suddenly decided that they needed his attention, right now.

There was a dull throb on his leg, where the line had been wrapped around it, and his head felt like it should be splitting open at the back, where he’d hit the water. His limbs were cold and starting to sting with pins and needles where there were no bruises throbbing instead and his chest was burning on the inside, where seemingly even more sea water was waiting to spill back out. Briefly Corvo wondered what had been of the hands he’d felt on him, but then dismissed it as a dream of his air-deprived brain. Even if the focal point of the burning, harsh and cold like someone was pressing ice shards into his sternum, seemed to be in the very same point where the hands had been. 

He absently rubbed a hand over his chest only to get tsked at from the side. Someone had gone and gotten Sokolov, it seemed. Now the man was scowling down at him as if Corvo had avoided drowning solely to inconvenience him from whatever it was he was doing with the scraps of whale meat he got as part of his pay. 

“What happened to him?” 

The medic wasn’t addressing him, of course, everyone was aware that that was quite useless, but one of the other whalers had stayed behind. 

“He got dragged overboard by a whale calf. Line snagged around his leg and pulled him right over. Went right under water, too before anyone could do a thing. We’d looked of course but he was under quite a bit, thought he’d drowned or gotten eaten when he suddenly bobbed back up like a buoy. Billie grabbed a line and climbed down the hull to haul him back. Soaking wet, too, no idea how she managed but there we are.” The whaler shrugged, as if there was no more to it. 

Sokolov’s brows drew down. “And you left him on the deck, soaked in cold water because why move a freezing man, am I right?” 

“Hey, it wasn’t long, he started hacking up water as soon as we got him on deck and then he already woke, wasn’t any time to move him anywhere.” The whaler grumbled something under his breath about picky doctors even as he was shooed out of the room with angry gestures. 

“Absolutely useless.” Sokolov decided, and turned his attention back to Corvo. “Let’s see about you and so help me if you try to play this down I will let you die of the pneumonia you’ll undoubtedly get, and you will deserve it, too.” It wasn’t exactly good bedside manner, but it got the job done, and Corvo didn’t fight him when the doctor started to go over his injuries. The head first, because apparently there was still blood dripping out of his wet hair, not that he could really tell by anything other but the pink tinged gauze that got dabbed against the back of his head and then unceremoniously dropped to the side. But finally Sokolov seemed to determine that he wasn’t going to die off that injury - after some deal with a lamp that had made his eyes hurt and left him blinking shapes out his vision – and tended to the others. By the time they were done cataloguing a surprising amount of abrasions and bruises, the pins and needles in his feet had nearly subsided, too and that would have been the end of it. But Corvo reached out and stopped the doctor from turning away, touching his free hand to the middle of his chest to indicate that there was something else left. It earned him a grumble, but he was obliged and Sokolov stripped his shirt off with practiced motions. It seemed to stick to his skin harder than it should have and when it finally came off, the doctor’s eyes went wide. 

Corvo looked down and saw that the where he had imagined the touch of earlier he now carried a marking of some kind. The skin looked almost painted but when he gingerly ran his fingers over the curved lines and points it was tender as if burned, which was absolute nonsense after nearly drowning just minutes earlier and yet it wasn’t any less true. 

He hadn’t heard Sokolov getting up to lock the door to the room, but Corvo certainly looked up at the sound of the lock clicking shut. The doctor watched him very carefully as he went back to the bed, eyes darting down to the mark ever so often. 

“How long have you had that?” 

Corvo shrugged in reply. His best guess would have been ‘since that whale tried to drown me’ but he honestly didn’t know. It was obviously still fresh, the skin directly next to the dark lines still red and somewhat inflamed. 

“Do you even know that is?” Sokolov sounded almost incredulous, though if it was at the presence of the mark, or the lack of interest from its wearer was anyone’s guess. He leaned close to get a better look, close enough to make Corvo lean away on reflex. There was something rather unsettling about being started at like that, and being halfway naked wasn’t making him feel any better about it. He’d seen that look on the doctor before, usually directed towards some piece of meat or organ they’d cut out of a whale.

Sokolov grumbled something about wishing Corvo’s muteness to the Void, and for a moment, the whaler was intensely happy that barely anybody on the trawler knew that he could write, and that the doctor had never taken to handspeaking like the rest of the crew had. Then again, he really wasn’t sure what he would have been supposed to tell the doctor. That he’d seen a whale calf and nearly drowned trying to catch it? That he’d hallucinated the touch of his dead wife? That- a sharp pain spiked through his head, making him flinch and reach for the bandage at the back of his skull, all thought of whales and drowning forgotten for a moment. 

“Very well, you will stay here over night, and you won’t tell anyone about this mark.” Sokolov’s voice was low and matter of fact. 

Apparently this was no issue that Corvo that had any say in, so he just nodded along. He didn’t see what was so special about the mark, aside from the fact that it existed at all, but talk about heretics flew easily enough and he had no wish to be burnt at the stake once he sat foot back into Dunwall. 

“Good. Now lay down and don’t move.” A somewhat ratty shirt was tossed at the sailor and Corvo put it on, a bit awkward with his still stiff fingers, but he managed well enough, and it hid the odd burn on his chest, twice so once he got the blanket over himself. He was still cold, down to the bone, in a way that almost made him think he’d never be warm again. He pulled the blanket high around himself. Sleep would help, he was sure of that, so he closed his eyes and indeed within seconds he’d drifted off, his last thought wondering why he could still hear whale song in the distance.


	2. Chapter 2

The rest of the tour was sadly uneventful. Sadly because they didn’t catch a single whale, but as they made it back to harbor, it seemed like a similar fate had hit the other trawlers. Only the _Delilah_ had caught anything, and the whale strapped into her frame was a small specimen, too. The only truly odd thing, aside from the lack of whales, had been the fact that Corvo could have sworn that he’d heard whale song often enough anyways. Sure it could travel for miles under water, but still, sometimes he’d had the uncanny feeling that the source of the song had been just on the other side of the hull. At night the feeling had always been especially prominent, often enough that he had escaped onto deck many times. There had been no song audible there and he’d gotten used to falling asleep on deck, leaned against one of the whale-frame’s bars. People had given him odd looks for that, but nobody had cared enough to get to the difficult task of prying the information from him.

At the end of the day, he was grateful to be on land again. Of course, Slaughtherhouse Row wasn’t exactly a comfy spot for that, but he was on dry land again and the walk back home was calming or at the very least distracting him. It was quite the walk over to the edge of Draper’s Ward, where he’d  moved after- after the outbreak of the Plague in his home district. He hadn’t been able to go back to his home, what with coming back from a whaling trip and finding the whole block sectioned of by walls of light and then, only then, being told that his family had succumbed to the Plague a week prior. It had been quick, his former neighbors assured him but what had he cared for that, really? His wife and daughter had been dead and in some pit together with the other plague victims and he hadn’t even been there for the funeral! He’d not exactly broken down as much as shut down afterwards. He’d found a new place to sleep, he’d bought food, but everything had been mechanical, his mind withdrawn into some dark pit where we went over the last words he’d spoken to them both, the last hours he’d spend with them, as if replaying them again and again would somehow bring them back to him. It hadn’t been as much a comfort as it had been a punishment and at some point he’d even recognized that himself. Jessamine would have resented it, to see him sink into grief like that so for her memory he had pulled himself out of it again, at least enough to clean himself up and get back to work, even if the dreams of her and Emily, the longing, never left him. It had been tempting enough, occasionally, to throw himself over the rail of the trawler at night. Or to sink into the depths, pulled by a whale, but neither had happened, had it?

He huffed out a breath and looked up. His feet had found the way home even without him really thinking about it, which was just as well, really. He unlocked the door and pushed hard to get the rusty hinges to open. There probably hadn’t even been a need for a lock, considering how hard the thing was to open but it just… it was proper that way, another old habit. Corvo climbed up the stairs, out of the damp ground floor to the rooms under the roof where he actually lived. It had been a fancy house once, enough that it had a nice roof terrace. Sitting out there had become one of the rituals of the day when he returned. Today too he sat down at the edge of the terrace, legs hanging over the edge and arms crossed on the lower part of the handrail. The only difference was that today he didn’t have a glass of brandy at hand. His head still felt tender enough that he didn’t want to chance a hangover. It would hardly make it hurt less.

Below him some small river channel ran between ‘his’ house and the next. It would have been pretty if the sun had been out, but it was overcast again. Actually, a strange kind of overcast. Corvo tilted his head back with a frown. The clouds were rolling like waves, and he’d never quite seen that before. It looked quite like one was looking up through water, seeing the surface above being beaten by waves and winds. It made him a little queasy, and for a moment his throat became tight with the memory of sea water burning its way down into his lungs. The churn was almost hypnotic and he stayed transfixed by it until a loud splash from below jarred him out of it and drew him to look down. Had someone fallen into the channel? But if it had been a person there was no trace of them, and the sound had been much too loud to be from a hagfish.

He leaned further forward, braced on the railing, but the water was muddy and the harder he looked the less he seemed to see, except for one moment where he thought he saw a pale shape glide under the surface. It made him jerk back in surprise and when he looked back it was gone and Corvo told himself that it had just been some trick of the light. The shape had been much too large for a human and there were no hagfish that size and whales… whales didn’t come into fresh water. Well, as fresh as the water of Wrenhaven River ever got. Still, even if it was just something his still hurting brain had conjured up, it had thoroughly soured the view for him today. He retreated back into the kitchen area of the floor and after a cup of tea and something-or-the-other from a can he went to bed. As he closed his eyes he had a fleeting moment where he could have sworn to hear the first notes of whale song vibrate up through the stones of the house.

Corvo wasn’t sure if ‘waking’ was quite the right term for what he did. He felt both heavy and weightless at the same time, unable to even move a finger or open his eyes but he could have sworn that he was floating all the same. It felt a bit like drowning had felt like, but he could breathe just fine and there was no pain at all. 

Behind his left ear someone hummed thoughtfully and he felt fingers – slender, with long nails – thread through his hair, making him tense. He hadn’t made a sound, but whoever was with him must have noticed anyways because the hand fell away and the humming stopped, giving way to a contemplative silence.  The presence moved around him without any footsteps, and he got the strong impression of swimming or at the very least flowing movement in the air – air? – in front of him. Hands twisted back into his hair and pulled his head back, thumbs running over his cheekbones in something that could have been a caress if it hadn’t been so clinical. The thumbs pressed over his eyes, gently, but with the touch came a whole symphony of sounds. Waves and whale song and something else entirely, vibrating in the background, beyond hearing but echoing through his bones. It made him shudder and gasp and the hands on his face shifted, one to cover his eyes, the other dropping down to arch over the mark on his chest.

“Good. Now you’ll see.”

Electric cold sparked over his skin and he jerked away and awake, his back flattened against the head of his bed before he was even fully aware that he was able to move again.

Even if it hadn’t been much of a nightmare by itself, it left him shaking and too twitchy to sleep.  Every sound seemed to be the opening notes of that blasted whale song, and the shadows around the room seemed swim and flicker until looking at them made him nauseous enough to flee the room onto the terrace. The cold air outside helped clear his head some. Corvo slumped back against the wall, ignoring the bite of the cold stones against his bare back until the feeling of something watching him from the shadows abated. It was just the remnants of that disturbing dream, he was well aware of that, but knowing that wasn’t very soothing.

He slowly slid down the wall and slumped forward, forehead braced in his hands. He felt miserable and hurt, and most importantly, lonely. He’d always been rather good at soothing Emily’s nightmares, as rare as they’d been, but now he found that he couldn’t do the same for himself. He hunched further down and something like a silent sob shook him, once, twice, until he’d fought down the need to cry and scream again. It never helped any, he’d tried it extensively after moving into the house, and it wasn’t going to help now, either.

 Still, he stayed where he was until his muscles started to complain about the cold and the lack of movement and he didn’t feel like the ground below him was subtly shifting when he moved. He stiffly pushed himself up again and headed back inside, shoulders drawn tight against the cold until he slid back under the blanket. This time, at least, sleep didn’t come with dreams of any kind, and these days it was a blessing no matter if the avoided dreams were nightmares of good memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter therefore a day early.


	3. Chapter 3

As it turned out later that morning, he would have been better off not sleeping at all. At least that was Corvo’s opinion the next day, when he came downstairs to find that someone had been in his home. It wasn’t like the place was wasted – no matter how exhausted, that would have woken him – but he could see things shifted around, a handful of trinkets that he’d been unable to pack away, and equally unable to keep close had been moved over the surface of the little shelf they were standing on. The cheap little sketch of Jessamine and Emily that he’d bought from some penniless artist on a street corner. It wasn’t a painting, but the artist had been talented enough to capture just how radiant they’d been, which was exactly why he’d tugged the picture away from his living quarters. Now he wished he hadn’t, because clearly someone had touched it, turned it to the side as if to get a better look at it. For a moment he was incandescent with rage that someone had touched it at all, much less left fingertips in the dust beside it.

He stalked over to it, but then hesitated before righting the picture again, touching it as little possible, as if it was hot. He didn’t linger on it, instead looking over the other contents of the shelf – glass pearls that had belonged to a necklace, a folded up drawing of Emily with a pair of simple earrings on top of it, small silver hoops with a single black glass stone on them. At least that’s what should have been there. Right now there was only one earring and that was… no it just wasn’t right, they weren’t expensive enough for a thief, and even if, why only take one? He dropped down to one knee, hoping that only some kids had gotten into the house, touched his family’s things and accidentally swiped the earring off the shelf, because the other option, that someone had stolen it, or worse that he had lost it somehow, was too much to think about. He ran his hands over the floor, hoping that his fingers catch on something, but there was only dust and dirt and something that he hoped wasn’t rat bones. But no earring.

At first he became almost frantic, crawling over the floor, as if the little trinket could have rolled somewhere, but to no avail. Before soon the hectic search ended and Corvo drew back into a corner of the room, knees pulled against his chest as he tried to breathe through the panic of having lost yet another piece of his family. His breathing hitched and wavered, he was sweating and his eyes stung, and it took him a long time to calm down again, he wasn’t sure how long except that that floor had warmed under him and that blocks of sunlight had started to wander over the floor and onto the first steps of the stairs. He swallowed dryly and stood up again. Sitting around wasn’t going to help, he had to figure out how someone had gotten into his home and taken her things.

Corvo dusted himself off and went to find out. The door looked fine, and none of the boarded up windows had been broken open. Indeed, none of the dustier corners seemed disturbed at all, at least until he got to the back of the house, where it bordered the channel. The wall went straight down into the water, with only a little decorative ledge that was too small to stand on, and likely would’ve crumbled on the weight to boot. And yet when he pushed up the window, there were faint markings on the windowsill, as if water had dribbled down and washed away the dirt in some places. But he was sure that it hadn’t rained any last night, and the channel was too far below to hagfish to splash water this high.

Then again, there had been that big splash last night and it could have been someone falling off the window sill and drowning below. For a moment he was torn between cursing the possibility that the earring may be at the bottom of the channel, and enjoying the idea that the thief may have drowned.  But the possibility of finding the earring was too much to ignore. There was a rusty old ladder in the channel wall just beside the house, and there honestly wasn’t much of a current…

Corvo didn’t really think about it much longer, just went outside, climbed down the ladder and took as much of his clothing off as he dared, hanging it over the iron steps before he dropped into the river. It was cold and he grit his teeth against it, fighting of the memory of the sea. He had to do this, he just had to, and he clung to that thought as he swam the few meters upstream to his house. Once he felt like something was brushing over his leg and he was already half expecting hagfish teeth to follow, but nothing came of it, so it had probably just been some debris from the river.

He reached the spot just under the window sill and honestly he should have been diving down now, but the idea of putting his head under water again was worse to bear than the cold. For a bit he was just treading water, fingers going numb until he had convinced himself that the channel had no semblance to the ocean at all, aside from being wet. It wasn’t deep and there sure as Void weren’t any whales down there. Right.

Corvo swallowed, took a deep breath, and dove under before he could think about it anymore. The channel water was too murky to see much, so he had to navigate by feeling alone. Sticking his fingers into the silt and morass at the bottom of the channel took enough courage already. His mind treated him to pictures of plunging his hands straight into a river krust or hagfish maws, or the broken bones of a plague victim and now that was a thought that made him cringe and dive back up to gasp for air. He opened his eyes and for a moment he thought he saw a shape shimmer under the waves, but once he blinked the brackish water out of his eyes it was gone. He frowned, but dismissed it as a trick of light and dove back under. The earring just had to be somewhere around him

But the second dive was different. At least it felt different. Cold and muddy all the same, but the skin at the back of his neck started crawling as soon as his fingers touched the mud, as if someone was watching him. He couldn’t resist the urge to open his eyes, the feeling was just too overwhelming. Of course the bottom of the channel was dark and the water made his eyes burn and he could as well have tried to see with his head stuck in a flowerpot. Still he strained his eyes to see something because there just was something in the channel with him. And then he blinked and suddenly the water was all but crystal clear. It looked as if he was looking at the world through golden tinged glass, and in the distance a swarm of pale yellow shapes darted from one side of the channel to the other. He almost inhaled a mouthful of water when he realized that these were young hagfish. It took him a moment to realize that there was something else that was the same lively yellow just at the edge of his vision.

For a moment he froze up before whirling around to find himself confronted with something that seemed to lounge on the channel ground. It was huge, the tail – for lack of a better word – spread out into the dark where this odd vision couldn’t detect it anymore. The main body seemed slender and almost human and then the creature pushed up and forward, hands – they absolutely were hands,  there was nothing else to describe them as – stretched out for him and he tried to reel back with a scream that only served to lose him any air he had left.

He inhaled on reflex again and started choking on the brackish water right away. The golden vision blinked out of existence as quickly as it had come, leaving him even more disoriented and flailing. His hand caught on something smooth and firm and he wrapped his hands around it without thinking. The thing he’d grabbed was warm and he realized one moment to late that he’d latched onto the very creature he’d tried to get away from, just as it hauled him in. Sounds bubbled up around them, whale song and something very much like a chuckle. His panic focused back into a struggle but now the thing had its hands on him, pulling him close with a clawed hand between his shoulder blades and one on his arm and he squirmed and surely he was going to drown now, he recognized the feeling of water filling his lungs now.

And then he was back on the side of the channel, soaking wet and coughing up water and shivering and watching as the waves of the channel flowed against the stream as something huge moved under the surface. Corvo reeled back, pushing away from the channel until his fingers brushed over something small that made a metallic sound against the cobblestones of the road. The sound was enough to distract him from the water, at least enough to look down. It was Jessamine’s earring, as pristine as it had been when he bought it for her.

Another chuckle seemed to rise from the water below.

Corvo retreated into his home as soon as his legs would carry him. His clothes – dry, by some miracle – had been left beside him, and he just grabbed them and rushed back inside. He felt safer inside, with walls between him and the channel, even if he had the niggling thought that this creature could get through them, if it really wanted to.  Still, it didn’t take longer than him getting dressed before the fear of the what-ever-it-was was replaced with anger.

That thing was toying with him and using his memories to do so. He glared at the wall that bordered the channel, as if he could burn a hole through it and hurt the creature. As it turned out, he couldn’t do that, but in a snap the odd, gold-tinged vision was back and it was seemingly unaffected by walls. He could see straight through it, the walls only a shade darker than the rest, and between and behind it all, little yellow shapes. Rats, he realized with a pang of disgust, and then behind that, at the edge of this strange new sight, the huge yellow shape hovering in the river, face turned towards him as if it was watching him. The thought scared him as much as it angered him further. The thing should stay in the Void where it belonged, and leave him alone!

He growled and turned away from it and the sight blinked out of existence again, leaving him with the comfort of walls one couldn’t see through anymore. Even knowing that rats were sleeping in the walls, it was calming to have the illusion of privacy. It had to be an illusion, because the persistent, low notes of whalesong where still vibrating up through the floor, just at the edge of his hearing, just enough to make him grit his teeth.

But how to get rid of the thing that was virtually in his backyard? It was…. He thought of the shape that he’d seen in the water, and just now again, with human enough hands and a head but then the body clearly flowed into something like a tail, a snake maybe, with two ribbons spawning from its body somehow. He’d never seen anything like it, he was sure, even if the creature was oddly familiar. Or maybe it was just the constant song that reminded him so much of work that everything else seemed more familiar from it. Being at work would be preferable to this in either way, partly because then he’d be able to put a harpoon into the beast and end its teasing.

Corvo stalked upstairs, where he cleaned up the smaller room beside his bedroom and then returned downstairs to move all his things, most importantly his family’s things, up there, hopefully out of reach for the creature. He was not going to let it lay hand on them again. With any luck, the thing had… jumped out of water and grabbed the window sill or something like that, it had to happen like that, it just had to. Because surely the creature couldn’t climb or move on dry land very quickly at all, it just was… it was huge. He looked out the window and down onto the channel and of course just in time to see something much like the back fins of a whale cut through the waves and then a fluke rise from the water and almost lazily fall back down again. The water barely rippled, despite the size of the thing, the sides of the fluke nearly touching the walls of the channel.

Of course it had to be a whale, what else in the Void would it be?  He gritted his teeth and grabbed a derelict flowerpot from the windowsill outside, some leftover from an earlier inhabitant. He aimed and chucked it at the spot where the whale-thing should be if it moved like normal whales did. It landed with a satisfying splash and then bounced of something close under the surface, bringing a smirk to Corvo’s face. The creature seemed to twitch down and he couldn’t help imagining that it pressed down into the river muck and wouldn’t it be nice if he had another flower pot to throw, but alas there weren’t any more.


	4. Chapter 4

The creature didn’t show its face again for the rest of the day, though the weather turned to the same strange wave-like clouds Corvo had already seen yesterday. He was starting to suspect that they were connected to the whale-thing. He rubbed a hand over the spot where the mark was hidden under his shirt. He was starting to wonder if he’d seen this thing when he’d been drowning. Had it been following the ship? Was that what he’d harpooned, what had pulled him into the water and nearly drowned him? And if so, why had it changed its mind?

He had no doubt that there was a mind to change in the creature, it was simply acting too human for anything else and the thought was almost as disturbing as the being itself. Not to mention the obvious interest the thing had taken in him, for whatever reason.

That line of thought was distracting enough to make him nearly forget to eat, and to keep him awake through the night, staring up at the ceiling until the darkness faded to the pale blue of morning.

He sight and rolled out of bed. Might as well get up and check back at the harbor, they should have the ship ready for another trip by now. Of course, those plans only lasted until Corvo made it to the window. Outside was no trace of Dunwall, at least not the Dunwall he knew. There were some buildings he recognized, of course, but you couldn’t see the Kingsparrow Island lighthouse from his bedroom, and even if you could, the tower was listing sideways like an uprooted tree, floating in what seemed like a great blue-fogged expanse of nothingness.

The Void, he realized with a jolt. He’d never thought about what something called ‘Void’ would look like but this… it made sense, in a way. Familiar, but empty. There was no horizon, only bits and pieces of architecture suspended in the Nothingness, and the strange bonedeep hum he remembered from his dream. Recognizing it made him nauseous again, more so than his home floating over a bottomless abyss. He’d been here before, in his dreams, and the creature had been with him.

Corvo swallowed dryly and got dressed mechanically. It was a comforting piece of normalcy and served to calm him down a little again. If the thing had been in the Void with him before, it was probably here again; if it was here again, he was going to go and meet it. There was not going to be any of this paralyzed-suspension oxshit from last time, not if he’d have any choice about it. So he went to the door and stopped there.  He had to admit, it was almost pretty, the buildings and trees weightless around him and everything tinged by the soft blue light of the place. There was whalesong in the distance again, but here it sounded different. Oh, it was still recognizable as whalesong alright, but it was more melodious, sadder, much like it had sounded out in the ocean.

There was something niggling in the back of his mind, something about whales and the Void, but he couldn’t put a finger on it, so he ignored it for now. He could walk around his house, the cobblestones firm under his feet. Where the channel normally ran was now a dry sidewalk that looked like something imported from one of the posh corners of Dunwall. It arched over the expanse of the Void like a bridge, ending at something like a pavilion, draped in purple fabric and illuminated by whale oil. It called to him, another note in the background melody of the void, like a voice in the distance that called his name.

He approached it carefully, keeping from the edges of the ‘bridge’ and testing each step. It just didn’t look stable. The pavilion on the other side was, for lack of a better word, an altar. A crudely made table supported a piece of whale bone that had the same symbol etched into it as his chest.

The bone sang in tune with the whale song around him, weaving into it seamlessly and beckoning him to touch. It sparked cold as Corvo’s fingertips brushed over the old bone, tension easing behind his breast bone like a thread unspooled.

“Ah. Hello Corvo. I must admit, I was barely expecting to you to come out of that house.”

He whirled around to see a young man propped on the edge of the pavilion, only his head, crossed arms and shoulders visible over the edge. Corvo was sure that there was no ground there, only the limitless expanse of the Void and yet. Then he saw the edge of a whale fluke lazily wave around behind the other. It took him a moment to connect the two, to realize that this was one long, sinuous body. The surprise must have been plain on his face, because the creature pulled itself – himself? – up with the same ease as a man rising from his table. It floated in the foggy space of the Void and now, for the first time, Corvo could see it clearly.

It looked human enough from the hip up, skin pale and smooth, dark hair, and the only give away of its inhumanity the claws on the elongated fingers and the black eyes. But from the hip down the body faded into a whale’s tail, but longer and less plump. It was the same color as the creature’s eyes and seemed to absorb all light. It had the same small back fins as a whale; the same wide cut fluke and pale cream belly, even the barbells, attached to just below the hip instead of the head. As smooth as the human skin looked, the whale part was pitted with scars. Just below the fluke a great ripped series of scars ran across the back, in a pattern Corvo recognized as leftovers from a propeller, and one that looked new, and like a silver star set on the side just below the human skin.

The creatures hand dropped to the scar, a long finger tapping against it.

“It’s been a long time since a human hurt me, much less scarred me like that.”

Corvo swallowed. All that because he’d mistaken that creature for a whale calf?

Again the being seemed to read his mind, or maybe it just delighted in his fear because it chuckled again, floating a bit closer.

“A whale calf? Ah, it’s not so far off the truth. After all, they’ve called me the Leviathan before, and do they not call whales by the same name?”

Levi- oh. Corvo felt himself blanch, but wasn’t that really the only acceptable reaction to that information? Now he understood why Sokolov had reacted to the mark the way he had. Everyone had heard the rumors about the man’s interest in black magic.

“Dawn, I see. You are of course right. I am the Outsider and you bear my mark now, and my gifts with it. There’s really no reason to be afraid of it.”

Well, for Corvo’s taste, getting burnt at the stake by Overseers seemed like plenty of reason to be afraid. Oh, and of course the customary torture up front so that they may find out if there were any more witches to root out. Honestly, he could have done without that, and he also could have done without the amused chuckled from the creature. He wasn’t some trained hound that entertained nobles or anything like that.

“I admit, that is an option, but few of your futures end like that.” The Outsider drifted closer and around, circling Corvo and the altar he stood in front of as if to get a better view. He moved like he was swimming in the air, tail propelling him forward in slow, graceful movements. He paused behind Corvo, in much the same way he had in the first dream.  At least this time Corvo could actually see. Right now the fluke floated beside his right hand, and he was half-tempted to touch it, just to see if it was real, but it sounded like a bad idea. Who knew what gods took offense in, but touching them just for the sake of it probably was on the list.

A cold fingertip was placed on Corvo’s neck, the tip of a claw just the faintest of suggestions against his skin, almost tender, but it was warning enough all the same. The Outsider leaned close, enough that it became obvious that cold was rolling of him like it rolled off ice.

“Only very few people bear my mark, because only so few people are truly interesting. But right now, you fascinate me. A lot.”

The fingertip against his neck turned into a full palm, smooth and cold enough to make Corvo inhale sharply. He could feel the god lean forward until his lips were almost brushing his ear, but there was no breath to carry the words he heard, only cold and the smell of the sea and whale oil.

“I’m curious what you will do with my gifts.”

Enough was enough. Corvo took a decisive step forward, away from the ice-touch. He was no toy to be played with and handled without any regard for his feelings. He turned to glare at the Outsider, wishing for his voice so that he may yell at the creature, but it seemed to be doing well enough reading his mind so he contented himself to yelling there, with all the profanities one learnt when working aboard a whaling trawler.

It earned him a twitch of the Outsider’s mouth, definitely amused, but not outright laughing at him anymore; that probably already counted as a win.

“Very well, then I shall return you to your home.” 

It was no apology, but frankly if it meant that he could get some sleep that wasn’t plagued by whales or whaleshaped deities, he wasn’t going to complain.

The Void crumbled around him, the blue mist turning black and covering everything until the only thing he could see was the glow of the whale oil at the feet of the altar and then that too dissolved into tendrils of black smoke. It was disorienting for a moment, before the blackness resolved into the familiar shapes of his darkened bedroom.

Corvo huffed out a sigh. He was back from the not-dream, but it wasn’t as comforting as it should have been. One of the notes of the Void seemed to have carried over into the real world, and when he turned his head towards the sound, he could see the whale bone sitting on the small nightstand beside his bed, the mark on it as pitch black as the Outsider’s eyes had been. No way was he going to fall asleep again with that beside his bed, in the open. He got up and picked the thing up, surprised that it felt warm to the touch, as if it had been sitting in the sun, instead of the cold he’d been expecting. Still, he put it away, in the chest at the foot of his bed, hidden away under several layers of clothes, where the sound was muffled enough to ignore it and go back to bed.  What was left of the sound faded just right into the sound of the channel running below to lure him back to sleep quickly.

\---

When he woke the next morning the sky was still overcast with the rolling clouds, but now lightning was illuminating them from within, making the entire thing even more eerie. Knowing who was likely responsible for it did little to ease Corvo’s worries as he headed to the harbor to see when the trawler would be ready for another tour.

The closer he got, the thicker the throng of people became. Rumors were flying over his head. That for the past days, not a single whale had been caught, that there were no more whales at all, that the Outsider himself had decided to erase the Empire off the maps and that the clouds were the harbingers of a Void-storm, whatever that was supposed to be.

The latter rumours sounded nonsense to him, the creature hadn’t seemed overly invested in punishing people for anything, or rewarding them for that matter; aside from rewarding them for ‘being interesting’ of course, whatever that meant from the view of a halfwhale god. But the first bit about the whales that worried Corvo. He managed to squeeze through the crowd, people seemingly doing their best to get out of his way without even thinking about it. They couldn’t go very far, but it meant that unlike the rest of them, Corvo actually made it to the harbor and the anchorage of the _Hagfish_. Billie had to be around here somewhere and she’d know what was going on. More importantly, she’d understand him asking.

He spotted her off to the side, arguing with some guard and approached her. He didn’t catch more than the tail end of the seemingly very heated debate, but it was enough to let him know that the harbor had been closed.

She turned around with the scowl still plain on her face, but there was only so much arguing one could do with the guard if there was an official order. And they couldn’t exactly sneak the _Hagfish_ out of port like a dinghy.

“Corvo, what are you- you didn’t get the news yet, did you?” She snorted. “I’m sorry but we’re out of work for now. The blasted nobles decided to close the port because of some nonsense the Oraculars told them.”

_Why?_

Even without being able to handspeak, everyone would have gotten his expression.

“No whales. The _Delilah_ brought the last one in and you saw what a midget it was. Now the Order’s onto some prophecy or the other they discovered about driving away the whales. Absolute nonsense if you ask me, but of course nobody fucking does.” That was an old complaint of hers, and Corvo nodded along apologetically.

“Now the odd fucking weather on top of that convinced everyone that some witch business’s afoot and no ship’s allowed out of the harbor anymore, but that’s apparently going to bring back the whales or something. And of course the rich bastards didn’t waste a single thought on where the whale oil will come from if we’re not allowed to go fish for the beasts.”

Billie shook her head. “Just you wait, in two days the city will be a single Void-bound riot. You should go home, stock up on food and stuff before it gets any worse.”

She stepped a bit closer. “I’ll let you know when we’re free to go whaling again. You still live in that house over at the Draper’s Ward, right?”

But her hands were saying something else. _Meet me at the clock tower in two nights after sundown, someone’s gotta know something and I’ll figure it out_.

He nodded. Billie was excellent at figuring things out, that’s part of why she was first lieutenant on the _Hagfish_ at her age already. She’d probably make captain the moment Daud retired.

“Good, then off you go.” She more or less shooed him back to the crowd but he went willingly enough. Her idea hadn’t been bad, and if they really planned to shut down whaling for any longer than a week he’d need it, too. 


	5. Chapter 5

He’d picked up as much as he’d been able to carry and pay on the way back home, and it wasn’t anywhere near as much as he’d hoped. Prices were already soaring and were only bound to get worse. He could almost see the fear spread over the city like fog. It wasn’t bad yet, but it felt like something creeping up his back, and it only got worse at sunset. There seemed to be more rats, too, clustering in the shadows. That, too, had made him hurry up more, even though the rats seemed to ignore him and focus on other people. A block before his house he saw them clamber up some drunk on the street and then he really rushed to come home to escape the screams. There was no helping the poor sod anyways, at least not without the rats trying to eat him too. And even if they made it out, they’d catch the plague. He’d like to avoid that.

For once the so called ‘gift’ he’d been given was actually useful, because the first thing he checked for once he was back home was the amount of rats in the walls. To his surprise, not a single critter could be seen. Instead he could see the shape of the Outsider lounging in the channel again, but he wasn’t going to show any reaction to that.

Corvo wondered if the presence of the Outsider in his backyard really had something to do with the lack of whales or any prophecies, or just the moods of a bored deity. He could probably ask, he supposed - mind reading took care of a lot of his usual conversation problems.

“No, it’s not my fault.”

Corvo whirled around at the amused sound to find the Outsider hovering over his bed, dripping brine everywhere and looking like a smug bastard about it, too. How he’d gotten in was anyone’s guess, but the whaler was quickly getting used to just accepting the amount of weird he was being subjected to, if only because that meant he could get to the actually important answers quicker. Plus, asking a floating halfwhale on why it wasn’t subjected to the impermeability of walls was probably futile anyways.

“Your people are responsible for that mess all on their own. You would think that even something as short-lived as humans would recall. You write so many books, you even dig the ruins of older empires from the ground to study them, yet none of you have stopped to think of why these empires are in the ground now. You stripped the ocean of whales and now you seek to blame me.”

That wasn’t quite the answer he’d hoped for, really. Hearing that they were plainly out of whales was just bad, and not because it meant he’d be out of a job now. He was honestly considering leaving Dunwall as soon as possible. He’d stay for a bit longer, tell Billie about it. Kinda. Not the Outsider bit, she’d think he’d lost it, but the part about there being no more whales. He didn’t want her, or the rest of the crew, trapped in the city when things started going to shit. Without the whale oil whatever little bits of quarantine the city had would fail soon enough, too, on top of everything else.

“I see, you do possess some foresight. If only your fellow humans shared that with you, we may have avoided this repetitive mess.“ The Outsider sounded almost disappointed by it.

Before Corvo could ask anything else, the Outsider dissolved into tendrils of black mist and dissipated from the room. At least that explained how he’d gotten in there, in a way.

He spent the rest of the day boarding up the house. He was fully expecting riots to break out before the week was over, and he was well aware that the Hatters had taken over enough of Draper’s Ward to possibly be a problem for him, too. Nailing the windows on the ground floor closed would only help so much without boarding the door, too, which he refused to do. He wanted a way out of the house that didn’t involve jumping down to take a dip with the Outsider, thank you very much.

It went well until the night he headed out to meet with Billie. They met under the clock tower. It was both easier and harder to get there. A curfew had been called into effect earlier this day, but Corvo found that being able to see through walls made it very easy to avoid detection. Each use of the gift sent a cold tingle through his chest, like icy fingertips against the marked skin. How Billie made it there he didn’t know, but he also didn’t ask.

They pressed into a shadowy nook and started telling what they’d found out, hands moving silently in the dark. Billie had picked it up quickly, back when he’d started on the _Hagfish_ , realizing how handy it would be to be able to talk without voices. No yelling over the crash over the waves, no calling attention to yourself in the dark.

_I spoke to my girlfriend - you know, she cleans up at the Golden Cat. She said that the Overseers really did order the harbor closed for undetermined time. One of them cried to the whores, said end of the world was coming because there were no more whales and that the whales had kept the Void at bay. It was pretty garbled, he was sobbing through most of it. She couldn’t eavesdrop much longer but she said he sounded serious._

Corvo hummed an agreement under his breath. It fit with what the Outsider told him, at least on the lack of whales, and he told her that much, without mentioning his source.

_He’s probably right. I mean think of all the runes and bone charms you find at the beach, at the riverside. They gotta come from somewhere so what if this happened before? Someone figures out whale oil, hunts too many whales and it all comes crashing down?_

He paused for a moment, sorting his thoughts.

_I think you should leave the city before it gets worse. You were right, there will be riots soon enough. Curfew or not, I’ve come past places that looked razed._

Billie huffed. “And you’ll stay, of course.” Her reply was just an angry whisper, but scathing enough as it was. They had that argument before, about Corvo not caring enough for his own well-being. The last talk been on last journey of the _Hagfish_ , after he’d nearly drowned. She had called him a number of choice insults and he was pretty sure that the only reason she hadn’t been knocking him around the head had been that he’d still worn a bandage around it back then. Instead he’d gotten a solid bruise on his arm that barely showed between all the others anyways.

_I have nowhere important to go. You should go somewhere else. Be a captain of a trading ship, I know you wanted to do that for ages now._

She huffed again, obviously unhappy with the reply, but it had been expected anyways.

_You’re a grown man; you know what you’re doing. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be careful or I’ll come back and make you even worse._

Billie glared at him and punched him on the arm again, on the same bruise, making it sure it would last even longer. Then she leaned in and hugged him, quick and hard.

_That’s so that you don’t forget who’s your officer. And your friend. But you’re right, I’ll grab Cecilia and we’ll leave. She’s been talking about going to Tyvia, maybe we’ll do that._

She schooled her face back into neutrality and stepped out of the nook to fade into the shadow of the street. Corvo waited a while before following her. The way back home was easy. He knew where to slip and where Guards and Overseers would patrol and more importantly, he could tell where they would look. His luck lasted right until he came home and then gave out spectacularly.

The  door was ajar even though he knew that he’d left it closed when he’d gone out, and a quick look revealed that three people were inside, rooting around in his things. Looters.

Corvo stalked inside and closed the door behind him as silently as possible. He headed straight up to his bedroom to get the first intruder away from his personal belongings, picking up an old poker alone the way.  As it turned out, the intruder was a Hatter. Their dresscode was easy enough to recognize. He silently stepped behind the man and took aim to knock him out with the heavy iron when the gang member turned around.

As it turned out, the Hatter was much more accustomed to violence, and quick to draw and aim a pistol. The shot should have hit him, but didn’t. Instead Corvo felt being pulled forward and then found himself on the other side of the Hatter. This time, it was him who recovered quicker from the shock. Only by the fraction of a second, but was enough for a hit. The Hatter raised his arms in defense and that protected him from a nasty broken jaw, instead ending him with a broken arm. The bone gave in with a sickening crunch and the man screamed, high and wheezing as if Corvo had knocked the breath from him in the same time. 

Still the man stumbled back and then fled the bedroom, screaming the whole while but not just in pain anymore. No, this time he called for his fellows, Martin and Tom apparently. Corvo tried to stop him but the strange transportation had left him a bit wobbly on his legs and when he reached the stairs, the three gang members were already on the ground floor again, rallying. One of them took aim with another pistol and again Corvo traveled the short distance down the stairs in the blink of an eye. This time he was better prepared and already moving when he ‘landed’. He knocked the gun from the man’s hand and sent the three scattering again, this time with more shouts of surprise. But appearing among them hadn’t been a smart move, and now the three man were surrounding him, two of them with knifes in their hands. They lunged at him quickly and he blinked out from between them again, collapsing to his knees in front of the stairs, where the shadows were thickest. The mark on his chest burnt cold enough to take the breath from him and his vision swam with exhaustion. One of the armed men yelled something he couldn’t hear through the rushing of blood – or waves? – through his ears and Corvo knew that he wasn’t going to walk out of this. But he wasn’t going to die like this, on his knees and waiting for the knife.

He fought his way up to his feet again, to the mocking calls of the Hatters, rage and sheer determination coalescing inside him into a hard, flaming ball inside his chest, searing against the cold of the mark. He would have yelled something back at them, some challenge but even if he’d had a voice, his breathing would have been too ragged for that. Still, he gripped the poker tight and raised it, and as he did the heat inside him seemed to snuff out like a candle and instead the shadows seemed to grow thicker and then rats boiled forward from the dark, towards the Hatters.

The three men froze up and then bolted. Fighting one man was one thing, fighting a hundred hungry rats was something else entirely. They trailed screams of ‘witch’ and ‘black magic’ behind them.

Inside the house, Corvo collapsed onto the stairs, vision fuzzy and growing dark. The rats didn’t come back, and the few that had stayed back didn’t seem to have any interest in him, instead choosing to sniff at the food and items the would-be looters had dropped. He let his head fall back against the stairs, one hand coming up to lay on the mark. It felt cold even through the fabric, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, let alone move. Even just keeping his eyes open any longer was more of an effort than he could handle right now.


	6. Chapter 6

When Corvo came to again, he was still slumped on the stairs. The front door was closed for some reason – he didn’t recall doing that, but it was kind of fuzzy – and he was grateful for that for a whole number of reasons.

One of them was that he felt absolutely horrible. He felt  bruised all  over, his head was pounding like the worst hangover of his life, and the mark felt raw on his chest, enough that when he touched his fingers to the fabric, he was surprised that they didn’t come away bloody.

Whatever had happened last night had been witchcraft, and obviously so. Nobody would have known if he could look through walls or not, but he recalled vanishing and reappearing from thin air, he recalled rats that spilled from the shadows and didn’t even touch him. It was witchcraft and it meant trouble.

Surely there had to be some way to hide this, to not… bounce all over the place when startled. Corvo had no idea how he’d even done those things to begin with, let alone control them. At least the vision was a matter of focus.

The problem in figuring these things out was of course there was nobody to ask. You couldn’t get yourself burnt at the stake much faster than to go out and ask random people about sources on magic. You could, maybe, get some books on the Outsider, if you had the right kind of money to buy silence with, and knew a few open minded natural philosophers – actually, Corvo  was sure that Sokolov had some, but like fuck was he not going to ask him – but genuine, real magic? That was another animal entirely.

He staggered upwards to see if the looters had taken anything, but aside from making a royal mess, nothing was missing. The rune was still there, too, singing at him from under the bed. He picked it up and was half-tempted to pocket it. There was something rather soothing about its song, like someone whispering lullabies very quietly. Corvo rubbed his thumb over the lines etched into the surface of the rune, thinking. Something was niggling at him and he couldn’t quite grasp it through the haze of exhaustion and small hurts, at least not until he turned and put Jessamine’s earrings back onto the shelf, where they belonged.

Of course, he and Jessamine had taken turns telling Emily stories at night, and occasionally there were creepy stories among them. One time Jessamine had told them about a witch, an old woman that wandered the streets of Dunwall, by name of Granny Rags. They talked about it later, privately, and his wife has assured him that no really, back in her neighbourhood everyone had been convinced that Granny Rags really was a witch, that she was immortal and could turn children into rats if they bothered her too much. They rumors had brought the Overseers into the place repeatedly, but they’d never been able to find, let alone catch her.

Now Corvo was wondering if it would be worth a shot searching for her. He didn’t have many other options if he wanted to figure this out, and he was not going to go into the Void again, or ask the Outsider. It would probably be useless anyways, the creature seemed to be much more interested in seeing him figure things out on his own than giving easy answers.

Right. He put the rune back in the bottom of the chest again, worried about being caught with it, especially if the whole trip ended up being for naught.

As it turned out, getting into the district was easily enough by ferry, and most people seemed to be drawn towards the harbor so he was relatively alone on the boat. Close to his home there had been rumors, whispers of witchcraft behind his back, but the further he moved the rarer they got. Still, he was praying that seeking out this woman would actually help him. Seeking her was one thing, finding the infamous Granny Rags was an entirely different problem, and for most of the afternoon he was just wandering the district and feeling stupid for it, until he noticed that the rats seemed to be more populous in some streets. His first instinct had been to avoid them, but the rats moved around, blocking his way back while opening a path forward. They moved with too much deliberation to be anything other than a message. Corvo felt a lot less stupid about his endeavor now. If it really was Granny Rags moving the rats around him, then she clearly was a witch, and she clearly wanted him to go somewhere.

It didn’t make him feel any safer when he was moving among so many rats, but the he tried not to think about how they could turn on him any moments. The rodents herded him down into the sewers and then around turns and twists until he was thoroughly disoriented. At least the darkness didn’t turn out to be much of a problem. It didn’t help his headache any to see the world through the odd gold tinge, but it worked and let him avoid stepping on anything that may bite him. They led him back up through the moldy cellar of a building and then vanished into the walls until they were even out of reach of his new senses.

“I see my little birdies got you here in one piece, good, very good.”

Corvo flinched hard enough to teleport himself halfway across the somewhat soggy living room carpet before he even turned around. The woman didn’t quite look like her name implied, more like run-down nobility than someone who had lived in the sewers for thirty years ago or so.

“No need to be afraid, dearie, Granny’s not going to hurt you. I was hoping you’d be here sooner. It’s been a while since I had someone to talk to aside from my love.”

Ah yes, that. Talking. Corvo noticed that that was going to be an even bigger problem than usual as the old woman stepped into the center of the room where the light was brighter. Her eyes were milky, obviously blind.

Great, a blind witch for a teacher. A blind, possibly crazy witch. This absolutely had been one of his dumber ideas to date.

He tried to step back, but rats seemed to materialize out of thin air behind him, hissing and making damn sure that he wasn’t going anywhere.

“No dearie, that’s just rude to leave like that. Do come along, Granny will teach you what you need to know. My sight is still well enough for that, don’t you worry.”

She came over and grabbed him by the wrist, pulling him forward with more strength than someone of her age and apparent frailty should be able to muster. And behind them the rats followed, a writhing carpet of fur that left Corvo little choice but to go along with it.

Their destination at least turned out to be less sinister than he’d been expecting. He was made to sit down in the kitchen, which looked pretty comfy, considering the fact that the house seemed to have been abandoned for years already. But there was a fire flickering away in the hearth and tea brewing over it.

Granny pushed him into the chair and seconds later pressed a cup of tea into his hands. One of them anyways, his left she appropriated with the same firm grip she’d used to get him into the kitchen to begin with.

She seemed to study his hand for a moment before her blind eyes focused on his chest. “Ah, there you have it. Let me think, what have my little birdies told me? You can see them in the dark, you know how to Travel and you can call for them. Quite the array for someone without any training, and even without any interest.” The last bit sounded decidedly disapproving.

“My love seems to have a knack for picking the unwilling. Less predictable, one would think.” Granny paused a moment, thinking. “You want to gain mastery of your gifts, don’t you? I can teach you, if you help me in return. Nothing big, no need to worry. You just need to go some places and get some things for me. My bones are old and not as nimble as they used to.”

The smile she gave him was downright unsettling, but Corvo didn’t feel like he had much choice on the matter. Turning her down seemed like a great way to get eaten by rats. Plus, he actually did need her help. He found himself nodding.

“Excellent. Then we shall start right away. Get up, get up!” She pulled him out of the chair. “Show me what you can do!”

So he did.

By the end of the day, Corvo was regretting his decision to seek the witch out with all his heart. His head felt like it was going to fall apart any minute, his chest was burning and felt cold down to the bone and he barely made it home before collapsing onto the next flat surface – his bed – and staying there until he was woken by several dozen tiny feet running around on his back and screeching into his ear. It proved once and for all that the most effective way to wake up a man is to cover him in rats and wait.

The rodents herded him back to Granny, and then back home against on the evening, in an equally exhausted state. The game repeated itself for three more days before he was giving his first ‘assignment’ to do. As it turned out, Granny needed him to fetch items from all over the city, of kingsparrow feathers to plants he’d never heard of, but none of it too sinister, at least as long as he didn’t think about it in detail.

By the end of the week Granny felt that she’d taught him enough to satisfy her ‘black eyed groom’ and yes it had been that specific phrasing, to Corvo’s absolute discomfort. He was glad to be get away from her, even if he couldn’t deny a certain sympathy for her. Sure she was crazy and a witch, but he figured that she’d been awfully lonely, too, or she wouldn’t be talking to her rats like that. Or to the Outsider, for that matter, but then again maybe she didn’t have much of a choice there.

As a parting gift, Granny had handed him a bone charm.

“To let you hide easier, dearie. You may need it soon, he told me.”

Now he carried it in his coat pocket, fingers occasionally brushing over the smooth whale bone. It sang differently than the rune, softer pitched and more mournful. He actually liked it, especially once he turned the corner to his house and instantly flattened himself back into the shadow of the alley. Overseers were surrounding his house, obviously upholding some sort of perimeter, and equally obviously more of them were inside, probably also digging through his things the way the Hatters had. But if the Hatters had found the rune they might just had stolen it, destroyed it I the worst case. The Oversees wouldn’t be so lenient.


	7. Chapter 7

Corvo knew the neighbourhood, and how to get into most of the houses there, at least the abandoned ones. He surveyed his house from the second floor of the building on the other side of the street. He was suddenly quite glad for the training he’d gotten from the witch. Getting into the house, to his things, and back out in one piece, ideally even undetected would have been impossible otherwise. It was still incredible unlikely, but he couldn’t just… he couldn’t leave the bits and pieces of his family behind. A swarm of rats would probably have made for an excellent distraction, too, but he didn’t want that.

No matter where the rats were from, who knew what they were carrying, and they were vicious. He’d seen Granny’s take on a hound and win easily and by and large, humans were even less equipped to deal with that. For someone who worked on a whaling trawler, Corvo had never enjoyed bloodshed very much, especially not on other people. So no rats here, unless it was absolutely necessary. It still left him being able to see in the dark, and vanish into thin air and that just had to be enough now.

For a moment he thought he’d heard water drip behind him, but when he turned the room was as empty and dry as he’d  found it. He shook the thought from his head and focused. Get across the street, get in the bedroom, grab things, get out again and then get as far away as possible.

He swallowed dryly and remembered what he’d been told by his makeshift teacher: People don’t look up and people don’t really expect you to use magic.

So he went for that now, his first destination being some decorative ledge halfway between the third and second floor of his home, between two boarded up windows. Diffusing into mist still felt supremely weird, like falling apart only to instantly reassemble somewhere else. The first few times with Granny Rags it had made him stagger and gag, but now he had the motion sickness under control. If nothing else, years of seafaring had taught him how to move on unsteady legs, even if you were twenty feet above ground, on nothing but a slippery steel beam. Compared to that, the brick ledge was quite easy.

He braced one hard on the wall and crept around until he found an empty room to blink into. Dissolve, reassemble, hold your breath and listen close.

Nobody seemed to have noticed so he moved forward, mindful of the creaking floor boards and the voiced drifting up from downstairs. The problem was of course that he’d had to get downstairs to get his things, first.

In the end, Corvo opted for climbing down onto the roof terrace, after making sure that there was nobody in the bedroom. Once down there it became readily apparent why there was nobody in the room. It had already been thoroughly searched; clothes tossed every which way, furniture almost torn apart or at the very least toppled. The sight made him honestly reconsider the rat idea. It was oh so tempted to just call in a hoard of hungry rodents and let them deal with every single man the Abbey had sent. But he didn’t. He pushed the door open and slipped into his bedroom and started digging through his own things, somewhat more careful than the search party had been, but unlike them he had a goal.

First, the keepsakes of his family, where were easily enough to find. They were neither valuable nor extraordinary enough to draw anyone’s eye, and had just landed in a corner, when the shelf they’d been sitting on had ended up on the floor.

Corvo took a small bag and put the items inside, carefully wrapping the framed sketch in some fabric – a shirt, possibly? He didn’t check – before stowing it away. The rune however was nowhere to be found, and he honestly shouldn’t have been surprised by that.

It was obviously enough a magical item, what with the mark cut into it, and he hadn’t taken all that much care to hide it, either. So where would it be? Downstairs, in all probability and that meant it was likely surrounded by Overseers. Still, he didn’t want to leave it behind. Partly because from what he’d been told, it may be useful later, and partly because leaving behind some deity’s gift sounded like a great way to make said deity mad.

Corvo had seen enough angry whales in his life to know that he didn’t want the magical, swim-through-walls variety mad at him, either.

So downstairs it was.

His head was starting to pound from the constant strain of the Sight, enough that he had to grit his teeth through it. But he knew he only had one shot at this, so there wouldn’t be any breaks or pauses. He had to keep moving and hope he’d get away with it.

Staying close to the wall and sneaking down the stairs was nerve-wracking. Step, wait, listen, exhale slowly, strain your eyes to see if anyone was coming. Another step. His progress was tortuously slow, pausing again and again to hold himself still and think invisible thoughts. Somehow he really made it down to the last flight of stairs without being seen and now… well, now he would have to be quick and hope his newfound abilities didn’t give out on him in a bad moment. He could see the rune from his spot on the stairs, hidden away in the shadows. The rune was still singing, but at least in his mind, it sounded almost distressed, a faint echo of a whale that got pulled onto a trawler. 

Right there were five Overseers there, he could… yes, it could work like that. Corvo let the Sight drop and focused entirely on the Blinking. Exhale, diffuse. He reappeared right between the Overseers, hand closing around the rune and falling into wisps of black smoke in the same moment.  Inhale, diffuse. He was back up the stairs, already moving before his body had entirely solidified again. There was a second of shocked silence and then shouts rose behind him, and only moments after shots followed. Bullets chewed into the plaster where his head had been just a heartbeat before, but he was moving, turning the corner to his bedroom and barely slowing down, shoulder hitting the wall and bouncing off, back through the bedroom and out onto the terrace. The Overseers were coming behind him, shouting things he didn’t care to notice any further beside that it was loud and angry.

The next part… well it was good that he didn’t have any time to think about the specifics, otherwise he may have slowed down and that would have killed him. Corvo jumped up onto the iron railing of the terrace and pushed forward, into the thin air over the channel, eyes fixed on the flat edge of the roof on the other side, just within the range he could Blink to. Exhale, diffuse. For a moment the world went black and he had an almost giddy moment of thinking he’d killed himself, blinked into the wall or gotten shot or a million other things, and then his feet hit solid brick and the momentum threw him down on the roof of the house. Pain jabbed up from his left knee but he had no time for that now, so it went ignored as he pushed himself up, rune still in hand and bag over his shoulder.

The Overseers seemed to need another moment to gather themselves again before the shooting resumed, but at the distance, it wasn’t very accurate and weaving between chimneys and some architect’s excuse for style was enough to stop him from getting shot. Soon the shooters lost sight of him and shortly after Corvo made his way back down onto the street, where he’d raise less suspicion. The rune rested in his coat pocket, oddly warm and heavy and its song back to the soothing notes it had possessed when he’d first picked it up.

Still, it was too early to rest, even if now that he wasn’t really running for his life anymore, the exhaustion came crashing down on him like a rock. Corvo kept his head bowed more because he was simply too tired to keep it high than because he wanted to avoid detection. By chance or fate or the insistent call of whale song at the edge of his hearing he ended up near the flooded district. It wasn’t safe, he was well aware of that, but Void take it, he was tired and needed to sleep somewhere where people were unlikely to drag him out of bed to burn him. So he edged into the ruined part of Dunwall, first by foot, then in some cockleshell of a boat with a tiny motor. He felt bad for taking it, but it didn’t exactly look used anymore, dirty and with the paint peeling off enough to leave the name unreadable. He progressed until he seemed far enough from the edge of the district to avoid random detection and the moored the boat to something that looked like a rotten lamppost. It was enough to keep the boat where it was, and by now he was too tired to care about anything else anymore. Tying the knot was so much harder than it had any right to be, but his head felt fuzzy and raw and it made him clumsy. Somehow Corvo got the boat moored anyhow and then just curled up in the middle of the tiny thing, coat spread over himself to keep at least a little warmer. In any other situation it would have been horrible uncomfortable and cold, but as it was, he could have slept on a nest of Pandyssian hornets. A boat, gently rocking on the waves of the river, was heaven in comparison.


	8. Chapter 8

Passing out from exhaustion had the big advantage that when Corvo woke the next day he was still bone tired and unable to do much more than twitch in surprise.  Otherwise the sight of pitchblack eyes about two inches from his face and focused intently on him would probably have made him Blink out of the boat and drown by sheer surprise alone.

He tried to move back, but it proved somewhat of a problem with the Outsider that close to him. Sitting up would have them basically kissing and moving somewhere else was impossible on the small boat. Especially since most of the free space in the boat was currently taken up by the Outsider’s whale half. How he’d managed to haul his massive body onto the cockleshell without tipping it over or at least waking Corvo was anyone’s guess, but judging by the amount of brine that had pooled under him, he’d done it anyways.

“Finally. My dear Corvo, I was almost starting to get bored.” The Outsider leaned back, but not far enough for Corvo’s liking. Still, at least now he could sit up, even if every joint in his body seemed to protest the movement.

“It was a rather impressive display last night, you learnt very quickly. I had honestly expected you to let the rats deal with the men.”

Corvo leaned back enough to reply properly, without his hands getting trapped against the Outsider’s chest. Yes the deity could mind-read, but frankly he was more comfortable with the layer of separation he got from not relying on that. Having someone in your head, even if you couldn’t feel it, was just alien and intrusive and he’d rather pretend that it wasn’t happening.

_I don’t want to hurt people. Not even people like that._

The Outsider made a sound that would have been thoughtful on a human and was kind of worrying on him. “Rather unusual, for someone who earns his living by hunting whales.”

_I don’t like hurting them either, but I need to earn money somehow. I’m a good shot and it pays enough for…. For me_. For my family, he’d meant to say, but his hand started trembling at the thought and he abandoned the movement halfway through.

“For your wife and daughter? A rather noble motivation for such a bloody trade.” Now he sounded almost mocking honestly Corvo could have ignored that, if the Outsider hadn’t used that moment to pry the bag out from the side and open it to root around in it.

Corvo snatched the bag back and put it behind his back. His face didn’t betray much of his feelings, but his gestures got sharp and large, angry.

  _No, that’s mine. If you want the rune back, fine, but not this._ Never this.

The Outsider blinked in surprise, maybe because people didn’t usually take things away from him like that, or forbid him things, but maybe it was just confusion at Corvo’s underlying reasoning.

“You know that these trinkets don’t really have any attachments to your dead family. They’re just objects. But you risked your life to retrieve them last night, instead of money or food or more sensible items. No, you took just this.” He sounded honestly puzzled by it. “Why?”

_Because… because that’s what I have left of them. They died alone because I was at sea, I didn’t get to see them, I didn’t even get to see the funerals._

If there had even been any. Most likely there hadn’t been, but Corvo couldn’t bear imagining his two dearest tossed into a pit with all the other corpses, or just left rotting in their home. So he imagined that there’d been a funeral with flowers and candles and sad songs, the way it should have been. A proper farewell.

“So you carry these…. Oh Corvo, that’s very sentimental of you. Your guilt, too. There was nothing you could have done. I would know. I see everything, and there was no future where your presence would have changed anything. Even their suffering wouldn’t have been any different, just the pain of dying without you replaced with the pain of watching you die as well, or the pain of hiding their suffering from you. They wouldn’t have lived a day longer or shorter if you had been the-“

Unable to bear any more of that, to hear their suffering described in such an emotionless way, Corvo had leaned forward and covered the Outsider’s mouth with his hand, muffling him for the time being, before the voice continued, inside his head, with a touch of amusement that was even harder to bear than the lack of emotion before. The halfwhale didn’t even try to move his hand, making it more than clear that he wasn’t the last bit inconvenienced by or even caring about the touch at all.

“-there. You’ve sunken yourself into this sadness for absolutely no sensible reason. Was this why you weren’t fighting when I pulled you under?”

Corvo shook his head violently, but the voice inside his head didn’t stop at all, no matter how much he wanted it to end. The words cut into him like ice and right now he would largely have preferred if the Outsider had just gotten angry and drowned him. It would have been less of a torture than this. The words ripped every bit of grief back to the surface, every little bit of desperation and pain, until tears were running down his face and whatever reply the Outsider had expected from him got drowned out in memories. Emily smiling and prodding him into playing hide and seek with her every time he returned home, Jessamine out in the street, helping her neighbor nail some chair back together with her hair bound back and her sleeves rolled up. Jessamine sick with the flu – just the normal flu – and sniffling at him in the most adorably pitiful way. Emily stomping off after they’d given her a week of detention for getting into a brawl with the boy three houses down the street over something she refused to tell  them about. Emily on his lap while Jessamine read her a story. Arguing with Jessamine the day before their wedding, about some tiny detail she got completely stuck on until he kissed her to make her shut up and then they’d forgotten about the wedding entirely for a few hours.

It was that memory that stuck with him, the arguing and the kiss, back then when they’d still sometimes struggled to get each other, talked past the other’s point and accidentally hurt each other and made up for it with hands and lips and apologies soon after. His mind latched onto that pattern, old and familiar and suddenly his hand wasn’t covering the Outsider’s mouth anymore, but cupped around the back of his neck and their lips were pressed together.  It was only a kiss in so far that it involved two sets of lips, but aside from that, there was no emotion beside the pain that still seemed to almost radiate off Corvo. But at least the voice in his head fell to stunned silence, and right now he hadn’t wanted anything else. Just silence.

He dropped away from the touch again and curled back into the boat, away from the Outsider as if he couldn’t bear the sight or the touch of him any longer. The god still looked stunned, head tilted as if he’d never seen Corvo before, or maybe as if he’d just discovered an interesting new riddle to solve, something to entertain him for hours. Apparently he was not taking that kind of withdrawal for an answer either.  

The Outsider leaned in and seemingly got comfortable, fluke hanging over the side of the boat and barbel draped over his tail like fabric, if you could ignore the occasional twitching of the meaty appendages. For a long while he just watched and waited, until Corvo slowly uncurled again.

“You were practicing with Vera, weren’t you? I know the tone of the bone charm you’re wearing.”

The question seemed to jar Corvo, leaving him blinking and slightly disoriented from the change of topic. But at least this was a topic that didn’t make his heart feel like it was going to fall out of his chest.  The Outsider was obviously not going to go away any time soon and maybe… maybe if he focused on something trivial the god wouldn’t prod the painful spots again. Maybe he could forget that they had been prodded to begin with and pretend there were no tears drying on his face.

_Who?_

“Vera. You would know her as Granny Rags I believe. Nobody beside me even recalls her name anymore, it’s a pity. She was once the most coveted woman of the Empire but she chose not to be the socialite she was expected to be.”

Now that was a thought that left Corvo almost equally confused as meeting Granny Rags to begin with. He could almost buy that she’d been nobility at some point, she still had the pose and style for it, but imaging her as ‘coveted’ just went too far. But it did offer him some groove to dig into, to maybe get some painful memory from the Outsider, in return for his own pain. As much as he disliked hurting people, he felt like revenge now.

_She called you her groom_.

Right, maybe he should have thought about that a bit more before saying that, because right now, with the Outsider sprawled over his boat and very much not dressed in anything approaching human garments, his brain offered some disturbing ideas of why the witch might have used that specific term and urgh he needed to stop thinking about that right now before the god picked up on it.

“I am well aware of that, but I never asked her for any such term. And we most certainly didn’t do any of the things you were considering just now, though I do appreciate the creative effort. She is not the first one to entertain such ideas about me, and she won’t be the last.” The Outsider didn’t do anything as human as shrugging, but it was evident enough in his voice.

He wasn’t sure if he should be somewhat relieved that it was just another layer of Granny’s apparent madness, or frightened about the fact that he had apparently been ‘creative’ about that, which was probably something a god had different scales for. Or maybe he should be worried about that fact that he cared about that sort of thing at all. That was probably how Granny Rags had started going mad to start with.

“I assure you it wasn’t.”

Corvo glared at him, hands coming up in clipped, short movements.  _Stop the mind-reading, it’s rude_.

“But it is a lot clearer than words, you have to admit that. Humans have a penchant for lying, to others, to themselves, occasionally to me, even if that is rather useless.”

He had to admit that the god had a point there, but he would really prefer if his thoughts stayed his own.

_I’m not going to lie to you, it’s useless anyways. Now get out of my head. Please_.

The Outsider inclined his head to the barest of nods. Maybe he was just acknowledging that someone was arguing with him at all. He swished his tail through the water and nearly capsized the boat that way. One side touched low onto the surface of the water and for a moment Corvo had a great view of the school of hagfish under it, looking decidedly hungry, then the Outsider slid over the edge, smooth as silk, and the fish scattered before him. His tail arched up in the same elegant curve actual whales used when they wanted to dive deep, but the fluke falling back barely disturbed the water beyond making the reflections on the surface flicker and jerk in ways water shouldn’t.

The boat righted itself with another lurch, violently enough to make Corvo cling to the side of it. When he peered over the edge, there was no trace of any life in the water, fish or whale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're moving ever so slightly into ship territory.
> 
> That aside, an announcement of personal nature: the next chapter won't be up before Sunday, as I'll be out of town on a job thing and Saturday will be spent on the train for the majority. So Chapter 9 will be slightly late, but only slightly.


	9. Chapter 9

He stayed on the boat another two days, unwilling to use one of the abandoned houses. Most of them were infested with rats and those that weren’t mostly didn’t look like you could step into them without falling through the floor boards. But after nearly three days he was hungry and thirsty – drinking the water here was probably an awful idea – and he just had to go back into Dunwall proper.

Since last night there had been fires in the city, obvious enough from the orange reflection on the clouds and the smell of smoke. The illumination had made the clouds look even more ominous, like the sky itself was on fire as well. Still, it surprised Corvo that it had taken that long for riots to break out. It had been well over a week since all whaling had been closed down. Whale oil was probably being rationed and everything would be chaotic. All things considered, it was better for him that way, easier to slip into some house and steal some food without being noticed.

It was unlikely that the Overseers would still care about another stray witch if the city came down around their ears, but it never hurt to be careful. 

He picked a random, peaceful looking house at the edge of the flooded district and moored the boat there again. He took the bag along with him, unwilling to risk it getting stolen and just generally unwilling to part with it. The Outsider could say about it what he wanted, they were more than just trinkets and he was not leaving them.

Around here the streets were still deserted, but he soon walked into the party of Dunwall that were deserted now but certainly hadn’t been earlier. Furniture was thrown on the cobble stones, some of it obviously charred or formed into barricades, making it obvious enough what had happened there. He tried one of the houses to see if he could find food, but the door, already halfway torn off a hinge hadn’t left him very hopeful, and a look around inside proved him right. There was nothing of any value left, and the two next houses weren’t any better. He tried not to think about the fate of the people who had lived here, ignoring the charred dolls and bloodstains and dents in the walls as if someone had been thrown into it with great force.

The last house on the right finally looked a bit better, and he eventually found something edible there. Nothing fancy, but two bottles of water and a can of jellied eel later he felt something approaching human again.  Corvo rooted around for some more, preferably something he could take on the boat with him. His objective had him so distracted that he didn’t hear the sound at first. There were footsteps outside, whispering and then some absolutely hellish sound, metallic and discordant, drilled its way into his head.

It hurt, like nails scratching the inside of Corvo’s skull and he couldn’t help clawing at it. Covering his ears helped nothing at all and he fell to his knees with a gasp. He couldn’t scream, but the rune and bone charm in his pockets sure could, and the pain filled wailing of the bones seemed to echo through his head, another horrific counterpoint to the noise outside. He felt like his eyes were going to pop out as the music got louder, the pressure seemingly increasing into infinity. He curled up into himself, trying to find some protection and failing and then there was a hand on his shoulder, roughly pulling him to his feet again. There was probably also shouting but in all honestly he could neither care nor hear it over the din. The hand on his shoulder clamped down and whirled him around and there was only so much his body could take. Between the hunger, exhaustion and pain, Corvo’s legs just gave out and the world went dark around him, dark and blessedly muffled.

He’d later wished he’d stayed unconscious longer.

He’d been caught by Overseers, that much had been obvious enough once the torturous warbling of the machine had pulled him back to wakefulness. The masks were hard to mistake.

They brought him into the Abbey, or at least he assumed so. It had been hard to pay close attention to his surroundings when all he wanted to do was stab his ear drums out. They brought him into something very much like a cell, but obviously older, put one Overseers with one of the hellish boxes outside of it to guard him, and left.

He wasn’t sure how long they’d left him there, chained up and very nearly paralyzed with pain, when the noise suddenly stopped. For a moment, he could have cried from relief, his whole body slumping against the floor as the pain in his head finally faded to something bearable.

Footsteps crunched on the stone floor of the cell but he barely noticed, right until a hand fisted into his hair and wretched his head up. It would have been painful, but his head was still ringing with the aftermath of the noise and the new stings barely got through that background. Corvo found himself looking up at another Overseer, this time without the mask.

“So, witch. I have some questions for you.”

Fucking fantastic, because he could answer those, right? Especially with his arms chained behind his back. Funny how he hadn’t even noticed when that had happened, must have been while he’d been out of it. The situation was just bizarre, enough so to twitch the corners of his mouth up, and that was apparently not the right reaction. The Overseer backhanded him hard enough to make him see stars, the force of the blow knocking his head to the side and nearly flat on the floor, if the other man hadn’t still held him up by the hair.

“We’ll see how funny you’ll be finding this in a bit. And you don’t even have to try and deny your black magic. We found the whale bones and the marks on them. They’re being destroyed right now.”

Absurdly enough, Corvo’s first thought about that was more along the lines of well ‘The Outsider will be pissed that I lost that’ and less ‘I’ll be burnt at the stake’ but that thought sure followed right after. Of course, if they found the bones they also had everything else he’d had in his possession.  Again, the situation was just bizarre enough to make him laugh, silently as always, but the expression must have read just fine anyways.

“I think I’ll try questioning you when you’ve understood the gravity of your situation. Your evil spirit won’t come to save you. He can’t.” The Overseer gestured over his shoulder, and the other one picked the machinery up again. “Our music boxes have taken great care of that, and you seemed to quit enjoy them earlier, I think you will appreciate it even more now.” Another gesture and the noise started back up. Music box? There was no universe where this could have been called music.

Corvo was right back to curling into a ball as much as his chains would allow him, but no matter where he turned, the stone walls of his cell seemed to echo and amplify the noise beyond all reason, leaving him adrift in a single, unending moment of pain. It lasted…. He wasn’t sure how long it lasted, maybe five minutes, maybe hours, maybe a whole day.

He lost all track of time, until the pain and noise finally receded and gave way to foot falls again.

Corvo didn’t really care to move away, but he cared even less for getting manhandled again. His head felt brittle and thin, as if the noises had literally worn the bone away to paper-thinness.

The Overseers were talking outside his cell, and he tried to focus on that, but everything still sounded muffled, and he distantly wondered if his ears had taken damage from the assault. He  almost wished they had, it would be easier.

But after a little while longer his hearing returned to normal, bit by bit.

“-you sure that he didn’t move from his spot at all? You didn’t stop playing?”

“Not for a second, sir. The witch was just laying there.  I don’t think he could have crawled somewhere, much less used witchcraft.”

The officer-Overseer – was that a rank? There certainly was some rank but he had no idea what it was and why was everything so fucking ridiculous to him right now? – hummed thoughtfully and then turned and walked into the cell. Corvo realized that it hadn’t even been locked, they had been so confident in their music box. Not that they hadn’t been right, but that still stung.

The Overseer crouched down in front of the whaler and watched him for a moment. Corvo pushed himself up into a sitting position, leaning against the wall. It wasn’t comfortable, but at least he wasn’t kneeling anymore.

“You know, the strangest thing happened while you were thinking about things, down here. The objects we confiscated from you are all gone from the labs. Private effects, magic items, vanished without a trace. I wonder what you might know about that.”

Corvo shook his head, glad that he really didn’t know anything. For all he knew, Granny Rags had sent her rats to retrieve the bone charm she’d given him and gotten a little greedy.

“Huh. You know, I’m almost inclined to believe you. But just to make sure I’ll investigate some more.” He grinned at Corvo. “But I’ll leave you some company.”

Oh Void take him, no. Not again. He probably looked as afraid as he felt, because the Overseer grinned at him. “Good, we understand each other. When I come back here tomorrow, we’re going to have a little chat about things.”

Corvo swallowed dryly and tried to steel himself against the ‘music’ before it could start again, but there was only so much pain your could prepare yourself for suffering through. Again the world vanished into pain and noise. At some point he either started bleeding or bit his tongue or something because at some point the choking taste and smell of iron became part of the cacophony. Maybe it had been his eyeballs melting from his head finally, it had felt like should have done that hours ago, but he could still see, blurry and dark.

It went on and on until he faded out, bursts of sound with growing stretches of silence in between. It wasn’t any more pleasant that way. He’d relax for a moment, thinking it was over, only for another burst of pain to lace through his brain. Like that it took Corvo a while to notice that there was no second Overseer and that the first one was slumping against the wall outside, music box silent in front of him. He could barely believe it.

Getting onto his feet was hard, partly because his hands were still bound to his back and why did he bother with that, again? Focusing enough to Blink was hard, so much harder than it had ever been before, like he was dragging his mind through mud. But he managed even if the effort of it made him want to scream. But he moved, barely a step forward but enough to let the empty shackles fall to the floor behind him. It was loud, echoing through the cell and for a moment Corvo had the vision of the guard waking and using the music box again, but nothing happened. Maybe the Overseers using the boxes wore some kind of earplugs, but it didn’t really matter now, did it?

He would have Blinked through the bars, but when he tried it felt like an ice pick had been driven through his eye and his chest, nearly making him crumble to the ground again. Right, no Blink, at least not now.

Corvo didn’t quite straighten up and walk, his body was too stiff from spending most of the day cowered down to do that, but he made it to the door, finding it equally unlocked as it had been before and shuffled out. Getting past the Overseer-guard was tricky enough, there wasn’t that much space in the hallway to squeeze through, and he still felt unsteady on his feet but he made it. Barely, it felt like, but he turned a corner and took a deep breath. Now he had to get out of…wherever he was, and he had no idea how. He couldn’t fight his way out, could barely even sneak so he just… he’d have to look for a backdoor or something. He shuffled a bit further down the hallway, until his foot hit something warm and fuzzy that squeaked at him.

As it turned out, that had been a rat. An uncommonly friendly one, seeing how it didn’t try to chew his bare feet – where did his shoes go, what the fuck? – but instead it just hopped away until he could barely see it in the dark and then looked back, seemingly waiting. Corvo took a step closer and the rat hobbled away again to the same distance. Maybe it was one of Granny’s rats? I would be like her to know that he’d gotten captured and tortured and do something about it like that in her weird ways, send a rat to see him out.

He stumbled after the rodent, down a hallway and around corners until the rat vanished into something that looked a whole lot like a manhole. He’d rather stay out of the sewers, especially without any shoes on, but he didn’t have many options, did he?

Corvo was sure he was imagining the sound of footsteps behind him, there had been no alarms raised or anything of that kind, so he just had to be imagining this, but the possibility of being caught again was just too much. He couldn’t go back near that music box, he just couldn’t.

Heaving the covering of the manhole to the side was almost more than he could manage in his current state, and then climbing in and hauling the metal back in place left him sitting on the filthy ground and panting for a few minutes. The smell would have been overwhelming if he’d been in any state of mind to notice it beyond the first shock.

He sat there long enough that the rat came back to start sniffing him and then nibble his hands and even then he only got back up when the nibble turned into something decidedly more painful.

Even with rat bites and the threat of music boxes behind him, there was no way he could hurry. It was almost pitch black in the sewers, with just the occasional ray of light coming down from above, just enough to let him avoid hitting his head on things most of the time. But he was still stumbling and bracing himself against the oddly slimy wall the whole time. At least there didn’t seem to be anyone else around beside the rat, and that certainly made it easier. He wasn’t sure if he’d been in any state to hide from people, or run from them.

At one point he started to notice a draft blowing against his skin, surely a way out, and the rat seemed to lead him steadily into that direction. Getting out of the sewers was enough of a motivation to make Corvo hurry up best he could, which in his current state wasn’t much and still took up enough of his few remaining reserves that he stopped paying attention to where he walked. That resulted in him stepped into something small, squishy and filled with needles, or so it felt.

He doubled down in pain, shoulder against the wall for balance because no way was he going to stand on that foot. Now that he paid attention, there was just enough light to let him see what he had stepped in: a dead rat. It must have been dead a while already, since most of the meat seemed to have turned into goo that was now sticking to his sole, with the brittle, broken bones that had stabbed up into his foot sticking out from it. His blood dripped along the bones and that just couldn’t be good, but between his pounding head and all the other aches in his body he couldn’t remember why, exactly. So he just reached down and pulled the bones out, pricking his fingers a few times in the process. This time, the rat didn’t bite him and just waited until he was done cleaning up as well as it was going to get.

How long he followed it through the sewers he wasn’t sure later on, but when he finally stood in front of a rusted in gate that lead back out to the riverside it was already dark. The clouds blocked out whatever moonlight there could have been, leaving only the reflected firelight to see by. It was eerie, leaving the river looking transformed and alien, dark red like blood, black where houses shaded it further. Corvo continued down onto some rocks at the shore. He wanted to clean the filth of himself, as much as he could, before remembering that river krusts liked that kind of shore just the same, and would probably have no problem attacking and eating him. But the rock was empty and there didn’t seem to be any other life around him at all. Even the rat had vanished back to wherever it had come from. He sat down on the rock and started washing himself, but the rock was smooth and warm and terribly inviting and somehow he ended up on his side, eyes closed and legs in the water and that, too, was a horrible idea but he couldn’t remember why. There was a limit to what the human body could go through in one sitting, and he’d reached it now. His eyes fell close and stayed that way even when something touched his leg and pulled him into the water. Maybe it was because the touch was cool and soothing against his skin.

The hands traveled up his leg, to his hips and chest and everywhere they touched he hurt less. They hesitated on the mark for a moment and the cold seemed to spread deeper, into his bones and along his veins, until the exhaustion gave way to just genuine sleepiness. The hands took up their wandering again, over his neck and finally settling at the back of his skull, almost cradling it. The pounding lessened almost instantly, the relief enough to bring a gasp from him. For a moment he thought he’d inhaled water, coughing, but it must have been nothing because he could breathe just fine now.  It felt as if he was being pulled around, but right now he couldn’t have cared less for it, couldn’t care for anything except the glorious absence of pain, soothing enough to lure him to sleep properly.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's your warning that the rating of the fic is going up to M here so proceed at your own discernment please.

He found himself in something that could best be described as a nest of a fabric. Dark blue and patterned with gold, threadbare in places and rotting in others but still luxurious. It seemed familiar and after a moment, Corvo could place it as the same kind of fabric that had billowed around the altar in the Void.

The air was cool and sea-damp and the place was shaded, with whale oil lamps scattered around like stars. He let his gaze wander, and for a moment it was all tangled darkness until it resolved into proper shapes. There was a pool of water in the middle of the… it had to be a cave of some kind, big enough to echo, now that he was paying attention to it. His nest was as far removed from the water as the wall would allow, and flanked by piles of other things. Most of it was driftwood, but he could spot a figurehead on one side, like ships had had back when they’d still been wooden. The figure was worn and discolored but still obviously a young woman whose legs had been replaced with a fish tail and wasn’t that familiar? Beside the figurehead were other bits and pieces from ship wrecks, planks and chests and an anchor or two, or at least pieces of them, pockmarked by rust and sea life. On the other side of his nest, down to the water line, piled a veritable treasure trove: fine china, pieces of silver that reflected the whale-light and gem stones that refracted it into colorful stars against the stone of the cave, coins and jewelry, weapons, now likely rusted shut, and between it all pieces of ivory. At least at first he thought they were pieces of ivory, before his mind made sense of the pale shapes. It was ivory the way any human carried it: bones, whole skeletons, aged to brittle grey or still almost fresh and white. And above it all, the weaving song of whales and whale bones.

Corvo couldn’t see them, but he heard them well enough, and here, combined with one another, the song was almost intoxicating. It was gentle enough, but still insistent, calling him to stand up and come to them and in an almost dreamlike state he did. They called him down to the water and at the edge, he could finally see them. Runes and bone charms lined the entire bottom of the pool. When he dipped his hands into the water, the ripples glowed and sparked like whale-oil but the moment he stopped moving the glow faded until nothing remained.

“I was almost expecting you not to wake at all.”

This time the voice wasn’t surprising Corvo at all. The bone-song in the water had changed subtly, now melting into the Outsider’s voice and that had warned him enough.

He looked at the god. The Outsider was mostly hidden in the water, but the glow traced him anyways, making him seem even more alien.

_Why did you bring me here?_

“I wanted to.”

Of course, why else. It had probably been a stupid question to begin with, but he hadn’t been able to help himself.

_Thank you, then_. But maybe he was just still interesting, for whatever reason. Corvo was honestly suspecting that understanding a god – or a whale – was simply not something humans were meant to do. Or maybe the reason was something else entirely, something much more profane.

_Are the bones from other people you brought here?_ Did the Outsider eat people? I would certainly fit the stories the Abbey told about him, the great devouring evil.

“In a way. But most of them weren’t alive for it anymore or just there incidentally.” He gestured at the nearest skeleton, half-sitting in the water and still draped with enough jewelry to show how much money they had possessed when alive.  It hadn’t helped them at all. “I kept him because the finery looked better that way. He was of no import.”

A stroke with the tail brought the Outsider within touching range.  “None of my Marked have been brought here so far, aside from you.”

Corvo was about to reply something, hands up and fingers curled into a gesture when he suddenly found half a hagfish in his hands.

“You should eat. It’s been two days since you left the flooded district.” And with that the Outsider dove under the surface again, drawing a trail of light after him.

Stunned Corvo sat there with his half of the fish. It was raw, bones and all still inside, but the god had been right: he really was hungry, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t eaten raw fish before, usually at sea when they’d run out of other things due to some misfortune or the other. So he dug in, just carefully enough to avoid inhaling the fishbones and then retreated into his fabric nest. He wondered how it happened to be there, if the Outsider didn’t entertain any guests here regularly, and he didn’t think that he slept on dry land anyways.

For what had to be hours, he was left alone, almost dozing. The entire atmosphere of the cave made it easy, especially the background song of the bones. He was drifting in and out of sleep for hours, until he wasn’t sure if he was awake or dreaming anymore.

At some point the Outsider returned, slithering out of the water, braced on his arms and the tail twisting against the cave floor like no whale would be able to do, the movement more like a giant snake than anything else. It was fascinating to watch, so Corvo did just that, eyes fixed on the sinuous movement until the god pulled himself into the fabric nest beside him, wet and oddly enough, warm like human skin.

It was almost a reflex, long worn into his muscles, when Corvo put his arm around the slim waist and pulled the Outsider, or pulled himself, close, there was no telling who of them was moving and who wasn’t. The whale-light flickered, sparking and rising. The light reflected in complex patterns on the wet skin, and he couldn’t help but trace it, run his fingers over the dips and rises of it, human skin and ribs, the rise of a hip bone that faded down into the smooth, firm body of a whale, but softer. The scars that crossed it were faint and just as smooth as the rest, only noticeable because they were paler and dipped ever so slightly.

The Outsider made a soft sound, almost curious, but he didn’t move away. He also didn’t move closer, but there was a soft inhale, almost a sigh that encouraged Corvo to explore a little more. He’d touched whales before, of course, but not one that was alive like that, warm under his hands. He trailed his fingers down over one of the barbels. Touching those on a full, live whale was an excellent way to lose a limb or two and now he understood why. The moment he touched the root of the appendage, the Outsider shivered and jerked away. He instantly drew his hand back, but that apparently had been wrong, too, because long, clawed fingers wrapped around his wrist and pulled it back into place, but this time the god controlled the touch, keeping it feather light this time, as if he was barely touching anything.  That seemed to be better. The Outsider curled closer, his tail now halfway draped over Corvo’s legs, heavy and like that he could feel the heartbeat, slow and steady like that of a much bigger creature, heavy and running into his body like the beat of a huge drum. 

His breath slowed down to the rhythm, deep and calm and heat radiating from the mark on his chest, drawing them together like magnets until somehow they were pressed chest to chest, hands roaming in barely-there touches, fingertips and claws and just the desire to explore and he wasn’t sure which of them that belonged to but he went with it anyways with the same sleepwalker surety. Their bodies seemed to almost melt together, finding the same beat to move to. There was no need to say anything as they became more decisive, fingertips replaced by palms.

Corvo had never even thought of anything like this before, had barely touched anyone since losing his family and now he wasn’t thinking at all, just acting on the animal craving for contact, even contact to something as strange as this. Lips ghosted along his jaw and he turned into it, lips parted in a silent gasp. There was only the slightest hesitation before the kiss was returned properly, and it turned out that the Outsider tasted like whale oil and seawater, and the taste seemed to slide down his throat and settle behind his mark to fuel the heat there. He pressed into the kiss, hands pressed between the Outsider’s shoulder blade and it drew something almost like a gasp from the god.

The tail on his leg shifted, undulating to slide between his thighs and press up, slowly but insistently until Corvo had to break the kiss and bow his head, breath shifting to something deeper. Lips slid over his jaw and down his neck, parting to let pointy teeth drag over his skin and now that made Corvo jump, mouth falling open in a moan. The Outsider chuckled and did it again, teeth scraping over skin in time with his tail sliding up and down between Corvo’s legs, never hurrying through any of it, but then again immortal beings probably had not need to hurry.

Mortals however had. Corvo inhaled with a hiss and suddenly his fingers were tangled in wet, black hair, roughly tugging the god back into a kiss that started as anything but slow and then burnt down to the same languorous pace as before, building up touch by touch until he was nothing but need tightly wrapped in skin and bones. He would have begged if he could have, but that would mean taking his hands away and he wasn’t going to do that any time soon. His hands only drifted down, never stopping to touch, until he could stroke them over the barbel again, long firm strokes that made the Outsider’s tail twitch deliciously. His fingers trailed down to the tips of the barbel, where they seemed to be particularly sensitive and draped over his waist but he wasn’t even halfway down when the big muscles in the Outsider’s tail contorted and flipped him over. Corvo huffed out a surprised breath, now looking up at the god, with his hands still at the other’s waist. The position left him almost immobile, trapped under the weight of the tail in a way that should have felt threatening but didn’t.

The Outsider tilted his head, like a bird watching prey and then smiled, wide enough to show teeth not meant for tenderness. His hands wrapped around Corvo’s wrists and pulled them up over his head, leaving him stretched out on the fabric. At some point his shirt had to have fallen away because it was open now, displaying scars and muscles and the mark, pitch black over his heart. The sight seemed to please the Outsider, and a responding jolt of heat seemed to hit Corvo’s spine like lightning and made him close his eyes and bite his lips. The heat intensified enough to take his breath away for a second, only to come back in a gasp when pointy teeth grazed his neck again, leaving a series of little bites down the muscle, more little marks. It was almost too much already, certainly too much to stay still.  His hips rolled up against the smooth body above him, warm, slick with water that should have dried long ago but didn’t. It felt like his clothes had just dissolved entirely, leaving them skin to skin so that he could feel every twitch of muscles, the smooth expanse of skin that was only marred in one spot. The scar he’d given the Outsider was a single coarse spot that brushed over the inside of his thigh with every move. It was in perfect counterpoint to the teeth on his neck, sending electric fire back and forth along his skin until he had to close his eyes to block some of the input out. He couldn’t feel all this and see the god’s back bowed over him and taste the seawater on his skin and the scent of whale oil and not come apart like a paper doll.

But even without the sight it was no reprieve, it just made everything else more intense, crashing into him like wave after wave of sensation until they crested together in a single blinding moment where he slipped one of his hands free from the grip on his wrist and dragged the Outsider back into a kiss, deep and slow, tongue and teeth and something like a moan that vibrated directly from the Outsider’s mouth into his own and seemed to hit just the note to make him shatter like glass. His awareness sharpened to crystal painfulness, all nerves in his body lighting up in a single sybaritic instant that burnt all thoughts from his mind and made him throw his head back in a long, silent groan that seemed to echo through the cave nevertheless or maybe it was the Outsider himself echoing that sound and all the singing bones around them with him.

He came out of it like waking from a dream and couldn’t help but wonder if that was what it had been, an exhausted fever dream. He was wet with sweat – sea water? – and alone in the nest of fabric, but out in the pool he could see the water disturbed and glowing in the wake of a fluke. Corvo flopped back down, exhaling shakily. Had he been dreaming that? It hadn’t felt like a dream, his skin was still tingling from remembered touch, but it also hadn’t seemed real at all, and only felt more surreal when he thought about it now.

The thought was followed by a low pang of guilt. Even if it had been a dream, it was somehow like cheating Jessamine, but…. but they’d talked about this. Naturally, he had more expected her to survive him. Whalers didn’t exactly have high life expectancy and he’d made her promise that she wouldn’t stay alone if something happened to him and she found someone else and in return she had insisted that he promised the same. It had seemed silly then but it didn’t seem silly now, even if ‘dream romp with the literal personification of the Void’ probably didn’t count as ‘finding someone’. But the thought dulled the guilt a little bit, at least enough to make feel at ease enough to get up and wander around the cave. He went around and picked up things here and there, turning silver chalices over in his hands or running his fingers over strings of pearls that were haphazardly  draped over a tangle of old weapons. He went along the wall of the cave and then the edge of the water to the other side until he had nearly reached his nest again.

Just a step to the side he noticed something familiar glitter up from right beside a whale-oil lamp. It was the pair of earrings he’d gotten Jessamine, and behind it the sketch. For a second he was stunned to find the things there, but then he recalled what the Overseer had said about the items vanishing from him. It would seem that the Outsider had nicked these things, right from under the Abbey’s nose. The mere thought of it made Corvo snicker silently to himself as he ran his finger over the edge of the sketch. He had no idea _why_ the Outsider did the things he did, but he was going to take it as a kindness anyways.


	11. Chapter 11

For almost two days, it had been fine, exploring the cave, even diving around the pool and listening to the bones. Their song meant something and would change with the mood or presence of the Outsider. For two days it was raw fish and seashells filled with rainwater and a strange kind of contentment.

Then he started coughing. At first he thought it was just a cold, it certainly was the environment for it, but it didn’t abate. And more importantly, he could see the way the Outsider was looking at him, distantly observing with the faintest hint of pity on his face.

It progressed fast, from the occasional cough to fits that would make his eyes water and his ribs ache until he thought he’d broken one of them. It became bad enough that he could barely sleep anymore, and certainly not flat on his back. After less than a week the only way to get any rest was trying to sleep sitting up, and even then coughs would shake him too often to do more than doze. Fever soon joined the cough and spent more and more time in the pool. The water was cool enough to make him feel better, but for sleep he retreated back to his nest. Some nights he would have half-dreams out of the Outsider again, cool hands that calmed his fever and let him sleep better. When he woke again he always found himself alone, but the runes still echoed with the god’s presence every time.

His hands started shaking in the second week, just faint trembles, but they made it so hard to do things, and soon were strong enough to make talking a chore. It was maybe the most frustrating part, worse than the lack of sleep. He’d never been particularly wordy before but now he felt like he had to tell the Outsider everything, as if imparting his memories onto someone who’d live forever would make him immortal by extension. And like that, he couldn’t, he just couldn’t anymore, until he caved.

_I think now the mindreading would be practical_

Corvo had to grit his teeth in concentration and slow down a lot to get it out right. The Outsider would probably have understood him nonetheless, but over time they had gotten something like an understanding. The Outsider would observe and leave him his pride, for the most part, and Corvo would indulge any question the seemingly unending curiosity of the god could summon up. Even the painful ones.

“If you think so.” The voice echoed in the cave as much as in his head, and it was almost soothing, knowing that even without talking they could still speak. Still, it left him somewhat locked into his head. Being unable to do anything with his hands – he’d carved more runes before, his own notes to be added to the unending song in the cave and sunk them into the proper spots in the pool himself. But now that was impossible, too.

All it left him with was thinking, and he knew how long that would last. The Plague took the mind, too, and long before the end, just after the eyes started bleeding. He knew that people disagreed on whether or not the Weepers were aware of their state or not, but now, on the brink of being one himself he wasn’t sure if any of this alternatives was less painful than the other. Suffering aware or unaware was still suffering.

He wondered in Emily and Jessamine had felt like that. Probably. They’d both been so bright and had to have known and braved it, but he found that he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t go through it to the end, but maybe they hadn’t either. He’d never seen their corpses, he didn’t know if they had died of the Plague or ended their suffering before it got that bad. But he made the decision without knowing about it. He didn’t want to become another skeleton leaned against the walls and draped with shipwrecked jewelry. And he understood that the Outsider had been right that time. It hadn’t been his fault that his family had died, and there wouldn’t have been anything he could have done to protect them. He was a whaler, no scientist that could have found a cure, and he would never have been rich enough to buy them a house in one of the safer districts. He’d only have suffered with them, and they wouldn’t have wanted that anymore than he would have wanted them to suffer to begin with.

_Would it be possible to go outside? I’d like to see the sun._

“Of course.” The Outsider beckoned him close and Corvo stepped into the water without hesitation. He had no more fear for the god, too tired and by now too familiar with the creature to still fear him. And even then, if he was to be drowned….he just didn’t care anymore.

The Outsider took his hands and pulled him under the surface and into the Void. The feeling of weightlessness didn’t change the least bit, but it let him breath and there was something exhilarating about being pulled through the blue Nothingness by the hands of a whale until they broke through the surface.

Corvo had no idea where he was. The water was warm and the shore soft, white sand that would never be found on Gristol and red rocks dipping up from under the water. He climbed one of the rocks and looked over at the shore and it was the cliffs at the horizon that clued him in to where he was: just off the coast from Serkonos. If he squinted just right, he could see the houses of Saggunto. He was, for better or worse, home.

_Thank you_.

He looked down at the Outsider, who had pulled his upper body out of the water to sunbathe. The picture reminded him of a story and he felt it well up inside his mind together with memories of his mother. He hadn’t thought of her in years, but he was home now, wasn’t he? It was fitting.

_There is a story about a mermaid people here tell. They say there was a mermaid living on the coast near Cullero, a beautiful young woman with a tail like a dragonfish, wide colorful fins and spines that dripped poison onto any sailor who tried to catch her. The people feared and admired her and many young fisherman desired her as their wife, for it was said that if you married a mermaid your nets would always be full even if the entire ocean was empty._

He fell into the same rhythm he knew from the story tellers, from his mother, even in his thoughts.

_But the mermaid wanted none of them and soon people started to admire her less and fear her more. They sent ships out after her, but her song compelled them all to turn away again. But the pursuit angered her, and the fishes started to flee the waters and soon the city started to go hungry. It was then that a young woman stepped forward. She asked the senate to give her a small boat and a flute and then she would go and find the mermaid and convince her to forgive the city. At first the senate refused. They couldn’t believe that a single woman with just a flute would be able to do what entire warships full of soldiers had failed at. But the hunger persisted and soon they were desperate enough to give her the ship and a fine silver flute and watch her row out into the realm of the mermaid._

_The woman rowed until her arms were tired and her hands raw and then she sat down in the middle of the small boat, crossed her legs and started to play the flute. The music was beautiful, mournful and it spoke of the waves and the longing for the freedom of the sea that no woman was allowed to indulge in. The mermaid heard her and it moved her to tears, but of course mermaids do not cry salty tears like humans do. No, her tears were thick and glowing like her hair and her dragonfish tail. They crystallized to amber in the water and for a long time, the mermaid just listened to the music, as captivated by it as the soldiers and sailors had been by her own song not so long ago. She cried until she was out of tears and the seafloor was covered in amber and the music finally faded, the last note hovering over the waves._

_The woman in the boat sighed. She had hoped to call the mermaid to herself like this and then talk to her, convince her, but there was no trace of the mermaid to be had. She turned around to row back and just then she saw her. Her orange hair fanned out in the waves like the sunset itself had loaned it its color. Her eyes were like pearls and her skin like sea glass, milky green and refracting the light._

_“Why did you stop playing?” The mermaid asked, and her voice was like the spring storms that came over the sea._

_The woman was stunned by the voice and the sight of the mermaid and needed a moment to gather her wits again. “Because I cannot play anymore, fair lady.” Her voice was breathless and rough from all the music she had played for the mermaid._

_“If I was to heal you, would you play again?” The mermaid swam closer, until she was right in front of the woman, only separated from her by the wood of the boat._

_“I would, but fair lady, as pleased as I am that my music was enjoyable to you, I came here today with a mission. I know the men of the city have wronged you and you are right to punish them, but when you take your revenge on the men who disturbed you and tried to catch you, you also harm the women and children that live in the city. I would beg you to reconsider your wrath, not for those who wronged you, but for those who did you no harm and were hurt all the same.”_

_The mermaid listened to it all, thinking it over. Her anger did not lessen, but she could see how she had hurt others in her punishment and she had not meant to do that._

_“As you will it, then, mistress musician. I can see that I did a wrong to people who did nothing to call my ire onto them, and I will relent on that. You may tell the people of your city that the women may fish my waters to their hearts content, but any man who throws his nets into the water will pull them out empty and shredded.”_

_The woman nodded. It was a fair offer, punishing those who had offended and sparing everyone else. “I will tell them as you told me.”_

_The mermaid nodded. “Very well. But I, too, have a request for you, mistress musician. I would that you return to me after you delivered my message to the city. Return to me and play for me and I will gift you the whole of the sea to travel as you wish, to dine on oysters and the finest of seabloom and clothe yourself in pearls and corals.”_

_The woman stared. She had no expected such an offering, had barely expected to return to the city at all. And now she was to be given her heart’s desire? How was she to refuse? She nodded, stunned to silence by the generosity of the mermaid._

_“Very well then, I shall return you to shore and wait there by the rocks until sundown.” With that, the mermaid dove back down and instantly the waves picked up the tiny boat and carried it back to shore, much swifter than any human could have managed and even swifter than the finest of sails would have allowed. Yet in the harbor the waves ebbed and allowed the boat to gently meet the wood of the quay._

_The woman jumped out and raced to the house of the senate. When she reached the gate, the guards recognized her and a meeting was called. There she relayed the message from the mermaid, still breathless from her race up to the hall. At first her message was met with silence, then outrage. Surely this had to be a joke, sending the women out to fish while baring the men from it. Some of the senators wanted to jail her as she stood, accusing her of treason to the city, others called for mages and priests for surely she had been bewitched. The woman fought the guards that came at her, tearing her clothes and bruising herself on the armour. But she squirmed and twisted like an eel and broke free of them all. She fled the hall of the senate and down to the harbor again, where her boat was still moored on the quay. She jumped in and cut the rope and instantly the waves picked her up again and carried her out onto sea, to the rock where the mermaid was waiting. She reached it just as the sun touched the sea on the horizon. The sunset was orange like the mermaid’s hair and tail, and yet in the water she still shone like a jewel in the dirt. She smiled at the woman and offered her a hand, webbed between the fingers and scales along the back of it, but the woman took it eagerly._

_“I would come with you now, if you would still have me, fair lady, but I lost my flute in the city.” She said earnestly._

_The mermaid replied with laughter and pulled the woman down into the water with her, and then against her lips. “I do not care for the flute if you sing for me instead, and if you need the flute then you shall have a new one, carved from the finest coral.”_

_Her kiss tingled on the woman’s lips and when she opened her mouth to reply, the voice that came out was clear like her silver flute had been and the water seemed to caress her legs, wrapping tight around it as they changed shape. They grew into a tail, but unlike the mermaid’s dragonfish tail, hers was silver and rough, lines sleek and angled and she recognized that it was the body of a shark that she’d been given. Full of wonder the woman looked at the mermaid._

_“Mistress musician, did you not know? The kiss of a mermaid can strip the mortality of a human and give it to the sea, and take eternity and freedom from the sea instead and give it to the human.” And she dove back down and the former-woman followed her into the depths, darting around her like the moon circles the sun._

Corvo took a deep breath. He hadn’t told the story in ages and for some reason he was crying over it now. At least he hoped that it was tears and not the first blood running down his cheeks, but he didn’t dare to check.

_This is why to this day only the women of Cullero go out to fish and why after the storms you can find amber washed up at the shore. They also say that if you stand out on the rock before the harbor you can sometimes hear the mermaids sing from below, like silver flutes._

“I have to admit, I never had the story told like this.” The Outsider sounded pleased. “And do you think it’s true? Can the kiss of a mermaid turn a man immortal?”

Corvo shrugged and slid off the rock into the water. It was only down to his hips here, but he walked away from the shore. He’d made a decision and he was going to go through with it now.

_I don’t feel very immortal these days._

A fit of coughing wrecked him, making him nearly double over into the water. But he continued on, until the seawater touched his lips. He thought of the feverdream night he thought he had spend with the Outsider, or maybe not, and took a last step. Below him the sea floor opened into a gaping maw, bottomless or maybe right down into the Void, and he let the water close over his head and exhaled.

“Ah but my dear Corvo, I never kissed you. It was always you who kissed me.”

The Outsider was below him and pulling him down now, into the dark of the ocean, like the first time, but this time the water was warm, and the only blood in it was his own. Corvo smiled at him and inhaled, sucking the sea water into his lungs. It burnt, it hurt, but no worse than the coughs, and by now he had experience with weathering those.

What he’d not expected was the kiss that came with the water, open-mouthed and light. It turned the water in his lungs into nothingness, turned his whole body into nothingness. His legs seized and he could feel them dissolving, or thought he could. The mark on his chest seemed to expand under his skin, sending cold fire through his veins, but there was no pain now, only the feeling of lips on him and weightlessness in the endless dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it, we've reached the end of this story. I would like to sincerely thank anyone who left comments or kudos or linked this fic to their friends or whatever. Your appreciation means a lot to me! It has been an incredible ride to write this story; for myself and even more, for all of you and in the end I'm actually quite glad my plotbunnies don't usually haunt me like this, i'd never get anything done if they did.

**Author's Note:**

> Because apparently nobody has thought to make the Outsider into a mermaid yet, and that's both baffling and a waste so here we are. Updates are to be weekly, guaranteed so because i got the whole thing written already and just need to beta it. May at some point have art added to it.


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